People and Teams
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Transforming a Team of Agile Skeptics into Agilists Coaching an agile-skeptical team demands a personalized approach. Agile introduces a different way of working and thinking, and leaders must find a way to overcome resistance and foster a collaborative culture. Take these three steps to move toward achieving an agile mindset and realizing the benefits of agile. |
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Maximizing Agile by Understanding Learning Styles To be most agile with your communication, understand several models of learning styles, where you fit into them, and where your team fits into them. By tweaking the ways you communicate to fit the information and the situation, you are helping your team remain agile by valuing people and interactions over processes. |
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Deception and Estimation: How We Fool Ourselves Research suggests that humans are biased, not-very-rational decision-makers. We believe we see things clearly when the evidence shows otherwise. Throw in a big dose of optimism, and it's easy to see how estimating software projects can be problematic. Our best hope is to construct diverse groups with varied viewpoints. |
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Providing Value as a Leader: More Than Just Being the Boss As a leader, your job is not to be the boss and check on every task, but to provide value to your team, helping them grow, learn to fix things, and make decisions without you. One of the best ways to provide value is by asking questions. Questions clarify expectations, confirm understanding, and build relationships. |
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Agile Tips to Make the Most of Conferences Time spent at a conference is precious, so you should make sure there is a return on that investment. What better way than to leverage agile ideas? Here are a few tips based on the principles behind the Agile Manifesto—embrace change, collaborate with others, and more—for making the most of attending a conference. |
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A Goal to Get You Writing NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month—is a month off, but it’s not too soon to commit to participate. The goal is to write 50,000 words (about 175 pages) during November. That may seem crazy, but there's lots of guidance and support available online and in local writer chapters. Break through that writer's block! |
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How Embracing Differences Makes More Robust Agile Teams On any team, there are bound to be some differences. But even though work styles may differ from what you expect, they may not be problematic simply because they are different. Before making assumptions about what a teammate is doing or why, just ask to find out. Their differences may bring a helpful new perspective. |
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Creating a Community of Testers Many teams are divided by product or feature, with only one dedicated tester per team. How do you learn and grow in your career when you’re disconnected from your peers? One solution is to create your own community of testers that spans the organization. Here are some ideas to start and facilitate a Quality Guild. |
