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Culture & Methods

The Role and Importance of Communication in Post-Hierarchical Leadership

Communication is important in a modern, post-hierarchical business. Based on theoretical and empirical research which analysed the role of internal corporate communications in a post-hierarchic leadership system, this article explores fundamentals of post-hierarchic management and leadership and underlines how corporate communications can act as a catalyst to foster and enable such a new paradigm.

Tyrone Castelanelli
on Jul 28, 2017
Culture & Methods

How to Communicate Better in Distributed Teams

In this article, Hugo, Arjan and Savita explain how their distributed agile framework can help distributed teams communicate better. Based on over a decade of experience, they share actionable practices that can help you improve the communication with team members across the world. Topics covered are virtues, trust, communication rhythm, retrospectives for distributed teams.

Hugo Messer Savita Pahuja Arjan Franzen
on May 26, 2017
Culture & Methods

Does IT Industry Need Better Namings?

The IT industry borrows terms from other domains, which is a fairly good approach. But we distort their meanings or use terms in inconsistent ways, within IT and also in comparison to other disciplines. This article shares some of these leaky terminologies with examples, explains why this matters and suggests how to deal with inconsistencies and improve the situation.

Ionut Balosin
on Apr 24, 2017
Culture & Methods

Dialling in: Atkins and the Communication Challenge, Runners up to the 2017 Spark Award

The benefits of collaboration and knowledge sharing are well-known, yet any large organisation understands how challenging it is to keep employees feeling connected. The runners up to this year’s Spark Award, sponsored by HotelBeds, are Atkins, a design, engineering and project delivery organisation of over 18,000 people who have been experimenting with a mix of communication methods.

Helen Walton
on Apr 10, 2017
Culture & Methods

Product Development in Distributed Teams

This article focuses on how to do product development in distributed teams. It shares some virtues and practices which help to minimize challenges and develop the right product. It covers tools to help overcome challenges due to distribution and foster good behaviours. It explains how to perform various product oriented activities like user research, story mapping, planning and refinements.

Hugo Messer Savita Pahuja
on Apr 06, 2017
DevOps

The Divisive Effect of Separate Issue Tracking Tools

Separate issue tracking systems for Development and IT Operations are a source of conflict and ineffectiveness for many organizations. For effective Database Lifecycle Management (DLM), we typically need shared issue tracking systems where DBA teams can see upcoming work from Development and Development teams can see details of live service issues logged from Production.

Manuel Pais Matthew Skelton
on Mar 22, 2017
Culture & Methods

Teams and the Way They Work

The terms “self-organised” and “cross functional” are often used to describe a team. What does this mean, and how will you recognise if your team has these features? Great teams work with the uniqueness of each person’s skills, experiences and outlook – forging the motivation to achieve a shared goal, within the constraints in which they operate.

Simon Reindl
on Mar 18, 2017
Culture & Methods

Developing Quality Software: Differentiating Factors

The level of software quality attainable is a reflection of an organizational business decision. There are many factors that influence this decision, including development, build and testing environments effectiveness, resources and their associated skillset, integrity, motivations and experience levels, commercial agreements, and adopted processes and productivity tools.

Cynthia Freeney
on Mar 02, 2017
Culture & Methods

Q&A on the Book Scaling Teams

The book Scaling Teams by Alexander Grosse and David Loftesness provides strategies and practices for managing teams in fast growing organizations. It explores five areas which often pose challenges when organizations need to scale -- hiring, people management, organization, culture and communication -- and gives solutions for recognizing and dealing with those challenges.

Ben Linders
on Feb 07, 2017
Culture & Methods

Managing Cultural Differences in Your Distributed Team

This article focuses on how cultural differences influence collaboration in distributed teams; it shares some virtues and practices which are helpful in bridging the cultural differences between team members. It defines culture and multicultural environment in distributed teams. It looks at questions teams can ask themselves to find out the impact of cultural differences in their day-to-day work.

Hugo Messer Savita Pahuja
on Dec 10, 2016
Culture & Methods

Inclusive Collaboration and the Silence Experiment

With highly collaborative approaches becoming the norm in the software industry, it is time to re-consider collaboration and provide workplaces and practices that embrace all kinds of thinkers. This article introduces Inclusive Collaboration and describes the Silence Experiment to help teams consider different aspects of collaboration and work more effectively with all types of minds.

Sallyann Freudenberg
on Nov 14, 2016
Culture & Methods

Internal Tech Conferences - How and Why

Software engineering today is every bit as much about the people as it is about technology - empowered teams don’t appear overnight. We need to oil the wheels of collaboration so they roll smoothly. Here, Matthew Skelton and Victoria Morgan-Smith discuss how to use internal conferences to boost your organisation’s social capital, the currency by which relationships flourish and businesses thrive.

Matthew Skelton Victoria Morgan-Smith
on Oct 10, 2016