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Don't Let Miscommunication Spiral Out Of Control

We miscommunicate every day, with results ranging from trivial to catastrophic. In this seasonally themed article, J. B. Rainsberger shares one of his secret weapons - the Satir Communication Model. It's a thinking tool to help us analyze troubling conversations, and to more deeply understand the people around us, building trust, the first step towards building an effective team.

Joe Rainsberger
on Dec 23, 2007
Offer People Reasons to Love Your Remote Meetings

With an increasingly global workforce, face-to-face meetings are becoming rarer these days. In their place, we more frequently conduct business with a very different experience using a teleconference line supported by desktop sharing tools. Tips and tricks effectively facilitating these interactions, an emerging and important skill, are covered in this article.

Pete Johnson
on Dec 10, 2007
Key Takeaway Points and Lessons Learned from QCon San Francisco 2007

This article presents the main takeway points as seen by the many attendees who blogged about QCon. Comments are organized by tracks and sessions: Keynotes, Architectures you've always wondered about, Architecture Quality, How much REST do we need?, Java in Action, Architecting for Performance & Scalability, Java Emerging Technologies, Challenges in Agile, Bleeding Edge .NET, The Rise of Ruby.

Ryan Slobojan
on Nov 27, 2007
Book Review: The Responsibility Virus Helps Fear Undermine Collaboration

Do "empowered" organizations outperform their command-and-control competitors? Business school dean Roger Martin saw this promising approach fail too frequently. His diagnosis: he calls it the Responsibility Virus, and offers tools to help those who would treat the Virus in their own workplace. Reviewer Deborah Hartmann found this book a good explanation of why process is not enough.

Deborah Hartmann Preuss
on Sep 10, 2007
Visualizing Agile Projects using Kanban Boards

In the spirit of "information radiators and “big visible charts” Kenji Hiranabe proposes using Kanban Boards to organize three viewpoints (Time, Task, and Team) so the whole team understands the current status of the project and can work in an autonomous, motivated and collaborative manner.

Kenji Hiranabe
on Aug 27, 2007
Culture & Methods

Designing Collaborative Spaces for Productivity

The typical Agile team may work in a common "teamroom", but personal space is also needed. Teams find out fast enough that some of the creature comforts left behind in their former traditional spaces were there for good reasons. This article shares the collected wisdom of dozens of teams who created their own work spaces, as collected by several experienced Agile coaches.

Deborah Hartmann Preuss
on Jul 24, 2007
Key Takeaway Points and Lessons Learned from QCon London 2007

This article presents the main takeway points and further reading as seen by the many attendees who blogged about QCon. Comments are organized by tracks and sessions: Case studies (amazon, eBay, Yahoo!) Java, Agile, the Agile Open Space, Qualities in Architecture, Ajax and Browser Apps, .NET, Ruby, SOA, Usability, Banking Architectures followed by a summary of peoples over all opinions of QCon.

Floyd Marinescu
on Mar 22, 2007
Agile Business Rules

James Taylor looks at the challenge that arises when the new requirements are not really requirements at all, but new or changed business rules. Aren't business rules the same as requirements? Taylor says: no, not really; and looks at how to make an agile development processes work just as well for business rules as they do for other kinds of requirements.

James Taylor
on Sep 04, 2006
Book Excerpt: Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great

Project retrospectives help teams examine what went right and what went wrong on a project. Traditionally held at the end of a project, they're actually too late to help - no wonder we call them "post-mortems". Agile teams need retrospectives that are iterative and incremental, to find problems and design solutions to help teams improve early on, when improvement yields the most benefit.

Diana Larsen Esther Derby
on Aug 21, 2006