The importance of the human element in delivering great software is sometimes overlooked, as is the relationship between team health and team performance. Just like physical health checks, team checkups are important. Let's look at some factors that can affect team health and how you can evaluate the important metrics.

Ruby and PHP are both open source languages, and both are ranked in the top 20 of the TIOBE index for most popular programming languages. If you want to learn a new language and are trying to decide between these two, let’s explore common differences in syntax and constructs to discover which may be more useful for you.

There are work items that will give the team an operational boost and perhaps avoid a crisis, but that never make it to the top of the priority list—like build and deployment improvements, or paying down technical debt. For enabling work that is valuable but too invisible to be a priority, consider breaking it down.