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Why Laughter Is a Sign of Creative, Productive Teams Laughter is a sign that people feel relaxed and safe. In a workplace, safety leads to environments that enable more idea generation and innovation, so one approach to improving teammates' creativity and connection is to encourage laughter. But how can you do that so it doesn't feel forced? Steve Berczuk has some ideas. |
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4 Impediments to Nurturing a Feedback-Rich Culture Being able to have open, candid conversations that fuel learning, growth, and improvement is critical to a team’s success, so it is important to look out for impediments that can get in the way of having a feedback-rich culture. Here are four common impediments to watch for, as well as behaviors you should nurture. |
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Fighting Key-Person Dependency Risk on Your Team Key-person dependency risk is when only one person on your team possesses certain business-critical abilities or knowledge—so if that person leaves, you're in trouble. The first step of mitigating that risk is taking stock of your team members and their skills. Decide what's important, and train or hire accordingly. |
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Is Your Agile Team Taking Every Opportunity for Communication? Scrum events are well-defined points where team members communicate, but they shouldn't be the only times. If you’re not considering coding, tests, and the delivery process as opportunities for a conversation, you are missing an important chance to leverage individuals and interactions, as the Agile Manifesto states. |
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Tips for When You Have to Deliver Bad News at Work Delivering bad news is rarely easy and never fun. But delaying and worrying often make it worse than it needs to be. Most people on the receiving end would prefer to hear bad news sooner rather than later, so instead of putting off the undesirable task, try some of these tips to deliver bad news as easily as possible. |
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Stress and Project Management: 5 Ways to Relieve Project Pressure Project managers have many sources of stress. They are responsible for the performance of their team members, and often for whether a project is successful or fails. Keep the pressure off with these five tips for reducing your stress and ensure a smoothly functioning team. |
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Slow Down to Speed Up Have you ever heard someone say, “How is it we never have time to do it right but we always have time to do it over?” When we rush to complete work, that's often when errors happen. It may seem counterintuitive, but slowing down may be one of the best ways to get the job done quickly—and right the first time. |
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The Role of the Test Manager in Agile In traditional software processes, test managers are responsible for all management aspects of their team. Agile, however, is self-directed, so teams handle all the usual duties. Still, there is a role for test managers in agile, and it’s much more strategic than it was before. Here are the opportunities for the role. |