InfoQ Homepage Agile Conferences Content on InfoQ
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How Team Feedback Can Drive OKRs
Team feedback meetings can help teams to define their own goals. Such meetings increase focus and motivation within teams, and with proper transparency they enable alignment between the teams’ and organizational goals. In his talk at Agile Leadership Day 2019, Michael Sommerhalder presented how Digitec Galaxus combined quarterly team feedback meetings and team missions with OKRs.
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How to Remain Agile While Scaling
Managing the complexity and scale of both the business and the software were key challenges as Yext started to grow, said Sean MacIsaac at Agile Business Day 2019. Yext addresses this by having product solutions that are broadly applicable and configurable by their customer team, and by hiding complexity with independently deployable services with clearly defined interfaces.
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The Ethical Role Testers Can Have
Testers should step up outside of only doing quality level verification and be the ambassadors of ethical change, said Michal Buczko at TestCon Europe 2019. Ethics and integrity are becoming more and more important. Ensuring that employees understand appropriate ways to address daily ethical issues can have a major impact on your project outcome and your relationship with customers.
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Accessibility Testing: Convincing Your Product Owner
Accessibility testing is just the right thing to do; the internet and e-services are a place for people to feel and interact equally, so our software should not exclude people, argued Martin Tiitmaa at TestCon Europe 2019.
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How to be Creative and Remain Focused in the Digital Distraction Era
The way we use digital devices has a strong impact on our cognitive skills. The main skills impacted are creativity and focus; both are very much needed in future jobs and they are very much influenced by our digital habits, said Monica Bormetti. She spoke about focus and creativity in the digital distraction era at Agile Business Day 2019.
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Becoming Outcome Focused: Q&A with Jeff Patton
We need to become focused on outcomes and adapt our way of thinking and our processes to continuously release small changes to our products and services, argued Jeff Patton in the closing keynote at the Agile Greece Summit 2019.
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Leadership in an Agile Environment
We would like agile leaders to stop being in the fire fighting mode. They should be there to help and empower, instead of taking over, argued Leonoor Koomen at Experience Agile 2019. She suggested replacing traffic light reporting with Obeya and showed leaders how they can focus on the deltas instead of covering and wanting to know everything.
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Spotting and Calling Out Micro-Inequities
Micro inequities, small events based on subtle unintentional biases, are pervasive and can lead to discriminatory behaviour, both negative and positive, argued Coral Movasseli in her session at Women in Tech Dublin 2019. The good news is that behaviour containing micro-inequities is malleable through counter-stereotypic training, intergroup contact, and by taking the perspective of others.
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Creating an Online Platform for Refugees Using Lean Startup
What do you do if you want to reach a new user group whose complex needs you need to learn about quickly? At Agile Business Day 2019, Stephanie Gasche shared her experience using lean startup methods to create an online platform, without financial support, for the integration of refugees and asylum seekers.
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What Tech for Good is and Why it Matters
Tech for Good groups provide opportunities to connect with people who share a positive vision of the future and look for ways to use technology in order to have a positive impact. Ellen Ward spoke about Tech for Good Dublin at Women in Tech Dublin 2019; she presented what Tech for Good looks like in reality, why it matters, and how people can get involved.
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Lessons from an Ex-Project Manager Turned Product Manager
To survive as a product manager, you need to put strategy first and be able to balance it alongside being heavily involved in delivery. All ideas need testing, and you need to truly listen to your customers to deeply understand their problems, said Emma Sephton. She shared her lessons learned from becoming a product manager at the Agile Greece Summit 2019.
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Lessons Learned from Innovating at Google: Frame the Problem, Use Data, and Define the MVP
The truly great, innovative, useful ideas come mostly from two sources: your target users, and people working in the organization - not necessarily those with a "product manager" hat. Experimentation can help us to materialize ideas into actual products and technology. Framing the problem, using data, and defining the MVP can help us to increase the chance of success in innovation.
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Effectiveness or Efficiency: Agile Shouldn't Feel Like a Fight
Have you ever felt like the “agile” you’re advocating for is completely different from the “agile” your organisation or managers wants? If so, you need to stop and reassess, argued Tony O'Halloran in his talk at Agile Business Day 2019. Having a mismatch in these fundamental goals causes stress and anxiety in change agents and can put you in an isolating and lonely place professionally.
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Using VR and AR for Pain Management
Immersive technologies have been used for the past 30 years to treat pain, PTSD, phobia, anxiety, and phantom limb syndrome. The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, and 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. Since we are visual by nature, we can use VR and AR in pain management.
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Changing How We Think about Work-Life Balance
The term “work-life balance” is outdated; what we now associate with work and life are not always the same as they were traditionally, said Jennifer Cox at Women in Tech Dublin 2019. In many cases they overlap or clash from time to time, making it even harder to mentally separate the two. “We have to shift our thinking more towards integration and alignment, than balance,” she argued.