InfoQ Homepage Agile Conferences Content on InfoQ
-
Embracing Diversity and Fostering Inclusion: A Necessity
In technology we need to consistently innovate and push boundaries, which we cannot do to the best of our ability without hiring, listening and retaining different demographics of people. A tech industry which actively supports and empowers underrepresented groups is a better industry for everyone. Embracing diversity and fostering an environment of inclusion improves the bottom line.
-
Reflections on Technical Leading: Q&A with Julia Hayward at Agile in the City Bristol
Employers need to adopt fluid structures for people to find balance in their role, technical and managerial paths should lie side by side, you can’t have genuine effective growth without psychological safety, and a good mentor to talk about problems and scenarios is invaluable; these are some of the reflections on technical leading brought up by Julia Hayward, technical lead at Redgate Software.
-
Underplayed Premises of TDD: Q&A with GeePaw Hill
TDD is more than a technique; it’s a whole style of programming, an integrated system of related behaviors and ideas. The five premises of TDD provide a ring in which we operate, they are the air that a TDD’er breathes.
-
The Importance of Feedback for Skill Development and Careers
Feedback and continuous learning are crucial for personal and professional development. Non-technical skills like creative problem solving, critical thinking, and an entrepreneurial mindset are important to make progress in your career. You have to own your career direction and know what you ultimately want to be in order to decide on the next steps.
-
Code Reviews in Practice
Code reviews are a great way to find bugs, get input from other team members, and share knowledge and ownership. For maximum benefit, integrate code reviews into your development process to ensure that no code reaches production without being reviewed. Reviews tend to uncover unresolved issues in the development process which you may need to address.
-
The Human Side of Microservices
A microservices architecture is a game changer for team communication, not a purely technical solution. If different teams don’t have stable, direct communication channels, the software they produce will suffer. The five key properties crucial for a successful microservices implementation are zero-configuration, auto-discovery, high redundancy, self-healing, and fault tolerance.
-
Building Human Interfaces with Artificial Intelligence
AI helps us to build human interfaces based on speaking and writing, instead of using a keyboard or mouse; it allows humans to stay human. The biggest challenges are finding ways to tell systems what answers are unsatisfactory to help them learn, be transparent in what data is recorded and retained, and ensure that diversity and inclusion is part of our training data to prevent bias in AI systems.
-
Think of Software as a Force for Good, Using Teal and Agile
A teal organisation set its horizon by defining its higher purpose and describing why it exists. Individuals join the company because of the value it creates for the world, and work freely towards a specific purpose. A teal and agile company has a culture of complete openness, transparency and mutual trust; everyone should feel safe and encouraged to share ideas, and make mistakes, without fear.
-
Bringing the Humanity Back into Customer Support
Treat your support team well and they will treat your customers well. Support teams need to be trained and trusted, they deserve autonomy and ownership over their work. Bots shouldn’t be used in customer support to help people solve problems; people need to help people even if it’s more expensive than hiring robots.
-
Build Agility with Design Sprints
Design sprints can be a powerful vehicle for challenging traditional ways-of-working that that hamstring business agility. Teams can solve challenging business and customer problems in incredibly creative, exciting and valuable ways, and as a group they are collectively more willing to kill bad ideas early.
-
Enabling Individual Growth for Business Value at Tangible
When a company starts to grow, working together is not enough for new people to learn the culture. For competence growth and for developing their culture, Tangible organizes workshops, internal days of knowledge exchange, hosted events and training, and evening activities, and assigns mentors for new people. This helps them to align individual values and intentions with the corporate vision.
-
Wave 2 Agile: Living the Agile Mindset
Living the agile mindset means actually doing it, not just talking about it. Living agile is only accessible to those who say yes to personal growth in a big way. If you want different behaviours in your organization, change your own behaviour. This is what Michael K Sahota is calling "Wave 2 of Agile", and invites everyone to join.
-
Organizational Refactoring at Mango
To increase agility, companies can descale themselves into value centers in charge of a business strategic initiative, with end-to-end responsibility and with full access to the information regarding customer needs. You need to create spaces where people can cross-collaborate and learn, using for instance self-organized improvement circles, Communities of Practice or an internal Open Source model.
-
Designing Organisations with Purposeful Agile
In a purpose-centric agile implementation, stakeholders make a clear shared purpose come to reality through visible outcomes. It starts with awareness of the organisation’s installed culture, finding installed habits and beliefs that pull back and block change, and deciding what you want to do about that. The second step is to create the necessary time and space for true change to happen.
-
Recognitions of 2018 World Agility Announced
The 2018 world agility recognitions have been announced by the World Agility Forum. Next to regional recognitions for companies in Europe, Africa, and America, there are also recognitions for creativity agility, agile in defense, team agility, personal agility, and lifetime agility.