leadership
Articles
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Solving 6 Major Challenges of Implementing Agile Implementing agile often means throwing out the rulebook when it comes to how teams work, how projects are organized, and even what the office floor plan looks like. This can be a difficult transition, but it's nothing to fear if you can anticipate the challenges and plan accordingly. Here are six of the greatest challenges teams face when implementing agile, along with some tips on how to avoid them. |
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Testing in Agile: How to Get Started There is a lot of interest in organizations around a transformation to agility. However, the focus is usually on agile development, so it may not be clear how software testing is done in agile. If you're responsible for leading your testing teams, don't let them be left behind. Here’s how you can make testers part of the transformation, too—step by step, because this is agile, after all. |
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6 Anti-Patterns Preventing Agile Teams from Self-Organizing People have different cultural backgrounds, habits, beliefs, interests, capabilities, knowledge, skills, and temperaments. When put together on a team, they can’t always be governed by a rulebook to become self-organized. The dynamics among them have to be understood to recognize the anti-patterns first. Here are six anti-patterns that must be avoided and remediated to help teams move toward self-organization. |
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Successful Agile Requires a New Kind of Leadership In an agile world, team members are empowered to make important decisions within the context of the behavioral architecture, without having to ask permission from supervisors or managers. But these supervisors and managers are coming from a lifetime of learning how to succeed in a hierarchical world, so they will need to leave behind those ingrained lessons. In order for agile to be successful at scale, leaders will need to change. |
Better Software Magazine Articles
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Scrum: Back to Basics So you think you know Scrum? Using the whimsical notion of farm animals and light-hearted visuals, take a refreshing review of the entire Scrum lifecycle as an intuitive set of roles, responsibilities, and handoffs. Particular attention is placed on what the ScrumMaster and product owner are expected to do at each handoff. |
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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. |
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Achieving Success through Servant Leadership Regardless of whether you are working with a stellar team or one that struggles, your style of management can influence the success of the project. Josh Dawson wants you to consider adopting servant leadership. |
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Hire the Right Developer Wondering why—with all the jobs you've applied for—you aren't getting noticed? Take it from Xojo CEO Geoff Perlman; it isn't just your programming or testing skills that will land you a job. Far from it. Geoff knows from experience that hiring the right individual is a careful blend of skill, fit, and passion. |
Interviews
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Becoming Agile Leaders: A Conversation with Bob Galen and Mary Thorn
Video
Bob Galen, principal agile coach at Vaco, and Mary Thorn, Vaco's agile practices lead, chat with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about the challenges of growing new leaders, the impact leaders can have on people’s lives, and how vulnerability can help leaders build trust. |
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Strategic Leadership in Agile: An Interview with Bob Galen
Video
In this interview, Bob Galen, principal agile coach at Vaco Agile, talks about the importance of getting rid of silos by breaking down the barriers of “them and us” and becoming “we.” He also discusses the need for agile managers to steer away from a tactical management view toward a more strategic leadership view. That means leading their teams by setting expectations and guidelines and being available to help if needed, but ultimately just trusting their teams to get the job done. |
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Discovering the Soul of Agile: An Interview with Selena Delesie
Podcast
In this interview, Selena Delesie, an international leadership and transformation coach and trainer, explains how your team can find the soul of agile, why some agile teams lack creativity, and who on your team should become a leader. |
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How Leaders Can Help Software Teams Thrive: An Interview with Isabel Evans In this interview, Isabel Evans, a quality and testing consultant, talks about the traits most often seen in effective leaders. She details different leadership styles that work best in different situations, how you can learn to lead agile teams, and what leaders can learn from the animal kingdom. |
Conference Presentations
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Providing Value as a Leader: More Than Just Being the Boss
Slideshow
Being a test manager is more than just being the boss. Sure, there is direction to set, issues to address, hiring, performance reviews, and status updates. |
Jeff Abshoff
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Scaling Quality through Community Leadership
Slideshow
Modern software development organizations often build teams around features. Unfortunately, these teams tend to become siloed, building tools and processes without being aware of how other teams have solved the same problems. |
Philip Daye
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Are You the Best Leader You Can Be?
Slideshow
We are all leaders. At a minimum, we must lead ourselves every single day, but many of us also have teams that we lead and serve. Have you ever stopped to analyze yourself to determine if you are the best leader you can be? Amy Jo Esser has had the joy of learning from many great leaders outside the testing arena, including John C. Maxwell, Tony Robbins, Mel Robbins, Brendon Burchard, Michael and Megan Hyatt, and Rachel Hollis. She continues to learn from leaders in our testing community, including the inspiring leaders and speakers who have been a part of the Women Who Test community. Join Amy Jo as she shares ways to be the best leaders we can be by employing approaches from these leaders, including “Win the Morning, Win the Day,” “The Continuous Learning and Growing We All Must Do,” and “Honoring and Embracing Your Fears,” as well as tips from other favorite leadership books, blogs, and podcasts. |
Amy Jo Esser
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Brainwriting: The Team Hack to Generating Better Ideas
Slideshow
Brainstorming has long been held as the best way to get ideas from teams. The purpose is to solicit large amounts of ideas in a short timeframe. |
Chris Murman
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