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Is Your Product Owner an Overloaded Operator? Overloaded operators exist when an operator or operation has different meanings in different contexts. This usually applies to variables and sets, but it can be true for people, too. These people try to do the work of many different roles—and usually fail. If you have an overloaded people operator, analyze the work and try to divide it up.
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Proactively Planning for Risks to Your Agile Project Being aware of risk is good project management common sense. But to address risk quickly and effectively when you encounter it, the best method is to establish clear, agreed-upon, communicated responses to risk before it even happens. Dave Browett suggests some tactics to mitigate and confront risk you can use with your team.
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Kanban for Software Testing Teams Kanban, a highly effective agile framework, is based on the philosophy that everything can be improved. And it's not just for development teams. The QA team also can use kanban to organize tasks, identify bottlenecks, and make their processes clearer and more consistent.
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Move Past Your Comfort Zone: Use Imposter Syndrome to Your Advantage When you're speaking, teaching, or coaching, do you ever suddenly feel like you're in way over your head? That there must've been a big mistake, because you're not qualified? Instead of letting this imposter's syndrome paralyze you, there are ways to embrace being outside your comfort zone and turn your self-doubt into a chance to thrive.
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The Real Key to Agile Success: Communication Think about the common practices of an agile team: daily stand-up meetings, retrospectives after every sprint, pair programming and buddy reviews, collaborating with customers, and more face-to-face time instead of mountains of documentation. What is the agenda behind all these operations? Frequent and open communication.
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How Being Agile Can Maximize Your Return on Investment There is more to calculating ROI than a simple equation. It can be affected by risk, time, and other factors—including whether your team is agile. Releasing software immediately after coding and testing accelerates feedback cycles, minimizes the cost of delay, and increases return on investment. Allan Kelly tells you how.
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Do Cross-Functional Teams Mean Cross-Functional People? Managers who want high-performing agile teams may think this involves finding people who all possess every required skill. But in addition to that being unlikely, it would also be a bad idea; it's the mix of perspectives that really gives benefit and value to the business. Instead, find experts in individual skills who can collaborate well together.
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Pair Writing across Time and Space Much like in pair programming, working with a partner through pair writing provides increased support and valuable immediate feedback. But there are additional obstacles when you and your partner are not collocated. Here are some tips on how you can still implement pair writing successfully when you can't collaborate in person.
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What Improv Can Teach You about Agile Success In both improv and agile, there is a tight-knit community where everyone can explore possibilities and feel free to innovate. Without that community, there can be no trust or collaboration. Travis Klinker tells you how success in both improv and agile means exemplifying transparency, adaptability, and unity.
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The Effect of Time on Value in Your Agile Projects Using effort estimates as the only criteria for deciding whether work is undertaken could be leaving money on the table. Considering value—in particular, the effect of time on value, as in whether there is a cost of delay—makes for more intelligent conversations and better decisions.
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