Articles

The Veracity about Velocity The Veracity about Velocity

Novice project management, measurement analysts, and even leadership may attempt to use velocity (an indicator of workload completed) comparisons to drive innovation and improvement across teams. In turn, teams are then motivated to inflate story points and velocity while losing perspective of their true purpose: value delivery.

Joe Schofield's picture Joe Schofield
7 Strategies to Build High-Performing Teams

As leaders, we need to consider the structure of the team and the alignment and purpose of the work the team does. This is to ensure that we have clarity on the value the team creates. In my opinion, a high-performing team flourishes in an environment where they know exactly how they contribute to the organization's purpose.

Venkat Edagottu's picture Venkat Edagottu
Keeping Your Company Agile While Getting Compliant

It's not easy to implement agile compliance, considering that it breaks down structure and hierarchy, which typically inhibit trust and collaboration. However, it improves the potential for better quality and makes it easy to implement comprehensive cybersecurity strategies.

Jordan MacAvoy's picture Jordan MacAvoy
Moon Communication on the Moon

While watching For All Mankind, an American science fiction series on AppleTV+, Derk-Jan has recognized 3 take-aways that will assist with agile collaboration and communication.

Derk-Jan de Grood's picture Derk-Jan de Grood

Better Software Magazine Articles

Developers and testers 5 Ways to Pair Developers with Testers

Some agile practices stress the importance of pairing team members together to achieve better team performance. Try these five suggestions for pairing key resources.

Jeffery Payne's picture Jeffery Payne
Building Autonomous DevOps Capability in Delivery Teams

After setting up a DevOps team and adopting continuous delivery practices, product releases may not be as smooth as they could be. The missing ingredient requires empowerment and autonomy.

Miiro Juuso's picture Miiro Juuso
Scaling Agile Thinking through Empowered Teams Scaling Agile Thinking through Empowered Teams

Just because a software team adopts agility doesn’t mean they’ll see results. Being flexible has its benefits, but ensuring that the team is given total responsibility to make decisions may be more important.

Bob Costello's picture Bob Costello
Bridging the Bimodal Divide between Waterfall and Agile

Most software developers are in either the agile or the waterfall camp. Agile is required to be competitive, but many enterprise processes still rely on waterfall practices for stability. They can coexist.

Steve Elliott's picture Steve Elliott

Interviews

Gene Gotimer Adapting to Working from Home: A Conversation with Gene Gotimer
Video

Gene Gotimer, principal consultant at Coveros, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about the challenges individuals and organizations face while we work from home during this global pandemic and how getting thrown into remote work could shape our future.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Jaimee Newberry The Power of Communication: A Conversation with Jaimee Newberry
Video

Jaimee Newberry, co-founder and CEO at Picture This Clothing, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about the power of communication, the HIPPO in the room, and how to create psychological safety in brainstorming sessions.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Melissa Tondi Embracing Tools and Technology in QA: An Interview with Melissa Tondi
Video

In this interview, Melissa Tondi, senior QA strategist at Rainforest, discusses the foundation you need in order to have a positive introduction for new tools and technologies. She explains why the team leader has to understand what motivates each individual and how to get them excited about their job. Melissa says team members also have to realize that if they are in any way involved in testing software, they are a technologist, so they have to embrace the tools and technology that will continuously improve and streamline repetitive tasks.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
8 Ways to Ruin Your One-on-Ones: An Interview with Jason Wick
Video

In this interview, Jason Wick, senior manager at MakeMusic, discusses his STAREAST presentation about eight ways you could be making your one-on-one meetings completely useless. He discusses in depth what he feels is the number one way to ruin these meetings: holding back on feedback. He also offers advice on how you can educate your team leader to avoid the pitfalls that lead to ineffective one-on-ones.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine

Conference Presentations

Agile + DevOps East Become the Person Everyone Wants to Work With
Slideshow

Drawing from her own experiences across twenty years in a range of industry roles, Jaimee Newberry shares true stories of at least a dozen tiny but important things she still sees every day that could make all the difference in how people work with you. 

Jaimee Newberry
Agile + DevOps East AWS Lambda: Best Practices and Common Mistakes
Slideshow

AWS Lambda is a serverless architecture that relieves you of hardware and scaling setup concerns. AWS Lambda functions are used by many organizations for serverless application development and automating DevOps tasks.

Derek Ashmore
Using Lean XP to Supercharge Your Agile Delivery
Slideshow

Most teams that do agile development start with Scrum. And why not? Scrum is a proven method for focusing your team, ensuring that work adds value, and minimizing the risk with release. Then, after awhile, Scrum becomes stagnant. 

Jim Collins
Agile + DevOps East Transforming a Team of Agile Skeptics into Agilists
Slideshow

Teams can hesitate to adopt agile practices, even when there’s a clear desire for transformation at the executive level. But there are strategies for coaching agile-skeptical teams into an agile mindset. 

Scott Weiner

CMCrossroads is a TechWell community.

Through conferences, training, consulting, and online resources, TechWell helps you develop and deliver great software every day.