InfoQ Homepage Self-organizing Team Content on InfoQ
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Adapting Test Teams to Agile Projects
Testing teams and their managers need to unlearn the traditional mindset and practices when they want to adopt an agile way of working says Navneet Goyal. At the International Conference on Software QA and Testing on Embedded Systems he gave a talk about how test teams should adapt themselves in agile projects.
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Enabling Agile Teams to Improve Software Quality
Long working days, deadlines and team pressure can impact the quality of the software that agile teams deliver. What can we do to prevent that from happening and enable teams to improve the quality of their software? Some suggestions are to arrange for scope and deadline slack, adopt pull systems, and to make sure that people can slow down and get enough sleep.
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On Power and Influence
At DevOpsDays Amsterdam, Mark Coleman asserted that all organizational's cultural changes start with one person influencing another. He finds that Charles Handy's writings on power and influence help on understanding how an organizations works and how one can go on to change it. Mark discussed Charles Handy's six sources of power and six methods of influence.
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Bol.com's DevOps Journey
On the first day of DevOpsDays Amsterdam 2014, bol.com, an online store, reported its experiences in its DevOps journey. Full automation, careful team building and an agile mindset that cross-cuts the organisation were the keys to success. RunDeck, Puppet, Hiera and Nagios enable bol.com to build and monitor a full working environment in under two hours, in a fully automated fashion.
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Do we Need Managers and Hierarchy in Agile?
In organizations that are adopting agile people sometimes state that the hierarchy should be abolished and that we should get rid of managers. They consider managers and hierarchy to be something that hinder self-organization of teams.
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Q&A with David Mole and Sandy Mamoli of Trade Me on Migrating to Spotify's Squad Model
Agile coaches David Mole and Sandy Mamoli recently presented a talk to Wellington's Agile Meetup group on their successful experience with team self-formation and a big-bang migration to a Spotify-esque Squad Model at Trade Me, one of New Zealand's largest online brands. We catch up with them to understand their motivations and experiences in this endeavour.
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The People Factor in Agile Governance
Trust is a decision about your investment in the relation says Anko Tijman. Agile governance should be build upon trust. At the Agile Governance conference in Amsterdam Anko Tijman presented being in control through people. Governance is often based on analytical control using structures and models.
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How Team Members Learn From Each Other in Agile Teams
When adopting agile teams can use (external) coaches and mentors. But teams can also develop themselves by having team members mentoring and coaching each other. Team members can learn skills and abilities from other team members in multidisciplinary teams, enabling the team to grow as a whole and become self-organized.
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How to Self-Assemble and Sustain a Self-Organising Team
A report on recent commentary by Mike Cohn, Thomas Cagley and others on the topic of team self-assembly and sustaining successful self-organising teams.
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Pair Coaching with Agile Teams
Agile coaches can coach in pairs instead of coaching individually. Each coach will focus on different aspects of coaching. As every coach has specific experience and skills they can complement each other. Two coaches can collaboratively help individuals or teams to learn and improve when adopting agile.
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Changing the Composition of Agile Teams
Organization prefer to establish and nurture stable teams, as reported earlier this year in the InfoQ news developing stable teams, and dealing with dysfunctions. But sometimes there are reasons why the composition of a team or of teams needs to be changed. If changes in team composition are needed, how can they be done?
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T-shaped Hybrids in the Multi-disciplinary Team
A survey of recent commentary and presentations by Ken Schwaber and others on the merits of the multidisciplinary, T-shaped, team-member within an empowered cross-functional team.
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Is Having Fun Important for Agile Teams?
Working in an agile team can sometimes be stressful, when the needs of the customers are unclear, if there is a lot of work to be done, or when team members are having difficulties doing their work. You might ask the question if having fun could reduce the feelings of stress, increase motivation, or increase productivity? And if that is true, then what can you do to have more fun in agile teams?
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Using Lessons Learned as a Dungeon Master on Roleplaying and Games in Agile Coaching
Guillaume Duquesnay uses his experience with games and roleplaying in his work as an agile coach. At the Agile Tour Brussels he talked about leadership, facilitation and management styles where no authority was involved. InfoQ interviewed Guillaume on his coaching, facilitation and leadership skills, and asked him if playing games gives happiness and fun to people, and make them more productive?
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Agile Retrospectives, Can You Skip Them?
Teams sometimes consider to skip a retrospective meeting, when they feel time pressure, or do not see direct benefits of doing one. Next they question themselves if they have to keep doing retrospectives? Agile retrospectives help teams to learn and improve continuously, and there are valid reasons to keep doing them also with mature teams.