InfoQ Homepage Communication Content on InfoQ

Articles

RSS Feed

Newer Older

Culture & Methods

How to Recognise and Reduce HumanDebt

We know TechDebt is bad; chances are HumanDebt is worse, and once you’ve seen it, you can’t “unsee” or ignore it. What is now needed is a focus on the humans who do the work. Psychological safety in teams is key. The “people work” -both at an individual, but especially at a team level- is the key to sustainability and growth of high-performing tech teams.

Duena Blomstrom
on Aug 06, 2021
Culture & Methods

Facilitating Feedback That's Psychologically Safe

This article focuses on feedback with regards to a plan or proposal - ways to make it easier to give and receive feedback, so the psychological safety of the team can increase. The aim is to give you insights, models, structures and practical things to try, in order to facilitate feedback that boosts psychological safety in your team(s).

Roy Marriott
on Jul 12, 2021
Culture & Methods

Building Stronger Human Teams by Managing the Inner Lizards

Each of us has an inner lizard that frets constantly about our safety. People come with brains that are pre-configured to scan everything you say for threats to their safety. Learning to recognize when you're operating under reptilian influence is a great start. This article introduces some techniques to help you manage the lizard within you along with those around you.

Mike Duskis
on Jul 01, 2021
Architecture & Design

Enhance Your Testing Strategy with Mind Map-Driven Testing

Mind map-driven testing can enable testers to focus on test idea generation, it exposes you to your thinking and enables you to brainstorm and organize your ideas effectively. This article shares ideas and knowledge about mind maps and shows how they can be used as lean documents to plan, organize, record, present, and report on testing.

Prashant Hegde
on Jun 16, 2021
Culture & Methods

Virtual Group Coaching: How to Improve Group Relationships in Remote Work Settings

Due to the pandemic, many software development teams will work remotely longer or permanently or work in blended venues such as some team members working in an office, some working from home, some working from other venues. Virtual coaching can help to improve group interaction or social dynamics in virtual settings where people work together remotely as a group or team.

William Rothwell Cho Hyun Park
on Jun 04, 2021
Culture & Methods

‘Debt’ as a Guide on the Agile Journey: Organizational Debt

In this article in a series on how ‘debt’ can be used to guide an agile journey, we will provide two examples of smells that are related to organizational debt, explain the symptoms, the impact on the business and in our organization, outline the experiments (countermeasures) that we have introduced in an effort to try to remove the smell, and provide some specific advice for you to be inspired.

Anne Abell Carsten Ruseng Jakobsen Rasmus Lund-Jensen
on May 26, 2021
Culture & Methods

Keeping Technology Change Human

When we are at the forefront of so much change, it's easy to forget that other people around us find change more challenging. This article is a reminder to look beyond the code and processes, to consider how tech team actions can affect our users in emotional ways. It seeks to establish a few ways of thinking to help bring others along with us when working through technology change.

Matt Overall
on May 20, 2021
Culture & Methods

Challenges of Working Remotely in Africa

Remote work can present new complexities such as communication gaps, time zone challenges, and even lack of transparency. Nonetheless, a well-managed remote team can readily overcome all these issues while discovering many benefits at the same time. This article focuses on the current situation in Africa citing specific challenges and solutions drawn from real companies in Nigeria.

Abiodun Osoba
on Apr 27, 2021
Culture & Methods

Moving from Collocated Management to Remote Leadership

Management in a remote organization is vastly different from that in a collocated one. Copying in-person interactions to digital tools does not cultivate a great culture nor does it contribute to better collaboration. This article aims to give you an idea of what the move to remote leadership entails and why it is essential for the success of any business in the remote work era.

Molood Ceccarelli
on Apr 21, 2021
Culture & Methods

Put the Feedback back into “Demo & Feedback”

As agilists, we know the importance of showing our work and getting feedback as early as we possibly can. That feedback guides what we do next. To get what you need to meet the desires of your stakeholders, this article looks at the demo and the feedback part of that session and provides suggestions for creating amazing demo & feedback sessions.

Jenni Jepsen Ole Jepsen
on Mar 18, 2021
Culture & Methods

Becoming More Efficient and Productive in a Distracted World

This article highlights how increased distractions in agile teams can affect our mental health and cause burnout. It outlines how various productivity hacks can help to reduce this problem and make you highly efficient using real-life experiences. Finally, it discusses various steps the software industry can take to help preserve our mental health and reduce distractions.

Raj Subrameyer
on Mar 11, 2021
Culture & Methods

Adaptive Frontline Incident Response: Human-Centered Incident Management

The third article in a series on how software companies adapted and continue to adapt to enhance their resilience zeros in on the sources that comprise most of your company’s adaptive resources: your frontline responders. In this article, we draw on our experiences as incident commanders with Twilio to share our reflections on what it means to cultivate resilient people.

Emily Ruppe Ryan McDonald
on Feb 05, 2021