InfoQ Homepage Scrum Content on InfoQ
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LLMs and Agents as Team Enablers
Eric Naiburg and Birgitta Böckeler published articles on the benefits and challenges of using AI as a multiplier in dev teams. We report on their insights for scenarios such as simplifying the germane cognitive load of a domain, automating code migrations, and coaching scrum masters on team facilitation. We also cover Böckeler's experiments with using LLMs to onboard onto a complex project.
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Adopting Agile by Increasing Psychological Safety in a Software Team
To test the agile way of thinking, a software team worked on their psychological safety with kick-off exercises, sharing coffee breaks, celebrating wins, a stand-up question, and 1-on-1 talks. This helped them to increase psychological safety in their software team.
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Why Stable Software Teams Aren't Always Best: Self-Selection Reteaming at Redgate
There are advantages to having the same group of people stay together, especially in achieving a time-bound software development project. However, in a world where we increasingly see product or stream-aligned teams who own long-living software from creation through to delivery, operation, and ongoing improvements, then optimising for very stable teams is not the best idea, Chris Smith argues.
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Adopting Agile in Specific Business Domains Using Domain-Driven Agility
According to Nikola Bogdanov, the real challenge in agile transformations is adapting to business domain specifics and industry constraints; understanding agile is not the problem that needs to be solved. He presented domain-driven agility which utilizes design thinking to visualize agile adoption and make it empirical.
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Creating Great Psychologically Safe Teams with Sandy Mamoli
Sandy Mamoli, author and coach at Nomad8, recently appeared on the No Nonsense Agile Podcast to discuss her experience in creating safe, high-performing and self-selected teams. Keith Ferrazzi, author of Competing in the New World of Work, also recently wrote about his experience with using empowering social contracts to cultivate great teams. Both emphasized safety and candour.
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Establishing Autonomy and Responsibility with Networks of Teams
Working in outdated ways causes people to quit their work. Pim de Morree suggests structuring organizations into networks of autonomous teams and creating meaningful work through a clear purpose and direction. According to him, we can work better, be more successful, and have more fun at the same time.
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Scaling Software Architecture via Conversations: the Advice Process
Andrew Harmel-Law recently published an article describing a decentralised, scalable software architecture process based on the "Advice Process". The Advice Process promotes software architecture by encouraging a series of conversations driven by an empowering, almost anarchistic, decision-making technique. It comprises one rule - anyone can make an architectural decision.
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Shifting to Asynchronous Communication in Software Teams
As some companies begin to go back to the office and embrace hybrid working, they are at risk of alienating those who wish to remain remote, which is looking to be a considerable number of workers in our industry. James Stanier suggests using more asynchronous means of communication and spending more time writing to each other rather than speaking in meetings.
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Virtualizing Design Sprint and UX Workshops
Design sprint and UX workshops can be done virtually using a combination of remote whiteboards and communication platforms. It brings advantages like being able to invite international experts, having remote participants attend, less travelling, smaller carbon footprint, and lower costs.
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Manuel Pais on Team Topologies during COVID-19
Manuel Pais, co-author of Team Topologies, recently spoke alongside leaders of Capra Consulting who have used the topologies to move from hierarchical structures to empowered teams. We report on the journey and speak to Pais about team topologies in the context of COVID-19.
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Paving the Road to Production at Coinbase: QCon Plus Q&A
As Coinbase scaled both their number of engineers and customers, they needed more projects, faster iteration, and more control over their growing infrastructure. In developing their in-house deployment tool by looking at what developers were doing and trying to help them, they created a culture of self-service.
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Characteristics of Agile Leaders
Agile leaders are passionate about agile practices. They look to instill trust in their people, create transparency and are open to constructive criticism so that great work can be achieved. They focus on the vision and customers. Understanding what agile means, they give autonomy to the people, support them, and encourage them to develop and grow through learning and experimentation.
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Agile Approaches for Building in Quality
Built-in quality is a core pillar in agile. However, if we want to build in quality at scale, we need to look at the whole development life cycle. Quality awareness needs to be increased at multiple layers of the organization; agile coaches can help by boosting quality thinking by embracing an agile way of working.
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Using Agile with a Data Science Team
Agile helped a data science team to better collaborate with their stakeholders and increase their productivity. As priorities became clear, the team was able to focus and deliver. Buy-in of the data science team by taking them through a journey of agile was crucial to making it work.
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Product Owner Is a Bad Bad Idea
The question of whether the product owner role is good or not clearly depends on a lot of factors, including team maturity, organisational maturity, organisational type, organisational complexity, and the product owner themselves. Some thought leaders are challenging the function of the role especially in these VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) times.