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Surprise! Making the Most Out of Your Most Surprising Moments

Lee Copeland explains that surprise is often an indicator that discovery, learning, or even delight may be just around the corner. The surprise itself can be amusing, enlightening, befuddling, disconcerting, or frightening, but surprise should not be the end of the experience; it should be the beginning. Analyze the surprise to learn why you didn't see it coming and what you gain from that.

The Software Development Game

Adapting your software development tools, practices, and processes can be difficult, even overwhelming. The authors have studied and applied game-like processes and behaviors to help provide structure to software development adaptation. They propose a process strategy called the software development game to help teams who are faced with change.

Making Beautiful Music—The Art of Small Teams

In a jazz combo, each member of the team has a specialty. As the members play individually, they create a tapestry of music that becomes much greater than the sum of the individual contributions. A small development team also works best this way.

Controlled Flight into Terrain

Entering a holding pattern on a project can give you the opportunity to gather additional information about a problem. But, sometimes, holding consumes valuable resources with disastrous consequences.

Crowdsource Your Career

In today's tech-centric environment, there are many advantages to building a social network both online and "in real life." Here are some ideas to help you boost your career, market yourself, and add to your problem-solving toolbox by harnessing this "people power."

How Do You Know When It's Time To Go?

Whether you are in a toxic work situation, or you feel you are no longer performing effectively, sometimes you find yourself at a crossroads in your job and you have to ask yourself, "Should I stay, or is it time to move on?"

Alternative JVM Languages For Java Projects

Java Virtual Machine has become a successful platform for applications written in many languages, not just Java. Alternatives like JRuby, Scala, Clojure, and Groovy can be more concise and offer new ways to approach problems.

What If Quality Shouldn’t Be Job One?

We live in a consumer-oriented society, where we are taught to expect that everything that we buy or create must be the best. Clearly, quality is considered to be a top-selling feature in many of the products that we buy. But what if it shouldn’t be?

The Three Amigos

Analysts determine what needs to be created. Programmers create it. Testers find the holes in the work of both. That's one way to do it, but all three can collaborate to do these things better, and more easily, too.

Raising The Bar For Configuration Management

Configuration management (CM) has matured into a "must-have" discipline. But, many CM experts have failed to keep up with what's required to implement CM best practices. Find out what needs to be done to raise the bar for CM.