Articles

Encouraging growth Agile Managers: Trust Your Team and Encourage Innovation

In order to fully embrace agile and create an environment where individuals want to work together as a team, managers have to move from a role of dictation to one of direction and mentorship. Instead of making all the decisions, managers need to trust their team members and empower them to solve problems on their own, innovate, and fail—or succeed.

Lisa Rich's picture Lisa Rich Mic Riley
leader in front of team Discovering Your Leadership Drive

Some people are born with the traits most suited to becoming an effective leader. Others may find that they have to work a lot harder to achieve success in a leadership role. But each of us has some innate potential to step up and take charge. If your team needs direction, don't be afraid to discover whether you could be the one to provide it.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
Leadership influence Personality and the Influence of Positional Power

The power that comes from our positions and roles matters most in terms of our own influence and ability to achieve desired results. You may have limited ability to change your position within a structure, but you have limitless potential to understand and make the most of positional power.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
DevOps Team Finding a Balance of Power on a DevOps Team

There is a natural tension between development and operations. When this relationship is in balance, each side helps the other. But when there is imbalance, bad things can happen. Leslie Sachs details the pitfalls that can sabotage a DevOps team, as well as the checks and balances that will help the team achieve productivity and quality.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
Resistance to DevOps Overcoming Resistance to DevOps

DevOps has it detractors, and they can send an enterprise back to the days when development and operations acted more like a volleyball game than a high-performance technology organization. This article will help you understand resistance to change involving DevOps and what you need to do in order to move that mountain.

Bob Aiello's picture Bob Aiello
Introspection in Testing Introspection and the Postmortem

How you handle a postmortem depends on your leadership approach, the culture of your organization, and, of course, your own personal strengths. This article will consider how positive psychology can help you conduct more effective postmortems that lead to process improvements and more effective organizations.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
Learning from Mistakes Positive Psychology and Learning from Mistakes

Mistakes happen. But team members can engage in very dysfunctional behavior after they have made mistakes—often because their organizations punish mistakes and cause damage trying to cover them up. Here’s what we learn from positive psychology about creating an environment where employees can be empowered to address their mistakes in an open, honest manner.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
Making Difficult Choices Myth 31: I Don’t Have to Make the Difficult Choices

"Don't bring me problems; bring me solutions." Sound familiar? Sounds like a management cop out to Johanna Rothman. A primary purpose of managers is to help their teams perform to the best of their abilities, and that includes stepping up and making tough decisions to help solve problems.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Management Value Management Myth 30: I Am More Valuable than Other People

Just because you have a fancy job title doesn't mean you can manage your team members by bossing them around. Servant leadership is an important skill for managers, as the best managers are those who serve the people who work for them.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
QA Management: All Bark and No Bite? QA Management: All Bark and No Bite?

Mike Talks shares with us the unlikely story of how his pet German Shepherd inadvertently became his team's QA manager. Talks explains how his German Shepherd was able to gather people together and have them talk to each other, similiar to what a QA manager does—keeping people on task, handing out assignments, and following up with team members.

Mike Talks's picture Mike Talks

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