leadership

Articles

To Move or Not to Move: Optimizing Agile Teams To Move or Not to Move: Optimizing Agile Teams

Agile teams often benefit from stability, but this isn't always the best approach. While stable teams enhance collaboration and productivity, they can also lead to isolated work and knowledge hoarding. Restructuring teams can offer advantages like employee growth, improved knowledge sharing, and better alignment with organizational goals. Ultimately, the decision to keep teams stable or shuffle members depends on specific project needs and desired outcomes.

Derk-Jan de Grood's picture Derk-Jan de Grood
Agile Change Management: Using Agile to Lead Change

Resistance to change in the business world limits the ability of organizations to transform, adapt, compete, and succeed in an advancing marketplace. It's important for today's leaders to adopt an agile approach to change management, being willing to risk, practice, and drive change from a visionary perspective.

Navneet  Saasan's picture Navneet Saasan
Mutual Trust: A Foundation for Self-Organized High Performing Agile Teams

One of the major contributors to an agile project's success or failure are the people. When it comes to people and self-organized high-performing teams, mutual trust is the foundational and one of the most critical factors. This article focuses on mutual trust in the context of agile software development, the 7 principles, and related steps on how this can be achieved towards building self-organizing and high-performing teams.

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

Better Software Magazine Articles

Scrum Basics 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.

Brian M.  Rabon's picture Brian M. Rabon
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
success 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.

Josh Dawson's picture Josh Dawson
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.

Geoff Perlman's picture Geoff Perlman

Interviews

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.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Bob Galen 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.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Selena Delesie 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.

Josiah Renaudin's picture Josiah Renaudin
Isabel Evans 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.

Josiah Renaudin's picture Josiah Renaudin

Conference Presentations

STARCANADA 2019 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
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
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
Agile DevOps West 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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