Articles

What Makes Kubernetes Agile What Makes Kubernetes Agile

One of the Agile principles is simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done is essential. Kubernetes provides simplicity through different features based on the Single Responsibility Principle for decoupling, and through automating tasks such scaling, resource allocation, and making updates.

Deepak Vohra's picture Deepak Vohra
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
Business Engagement How the Right Business Engagement Can Lead to Transformation “Happy Ever After”

Winning the hearts and minds of users should be a priority of business transformation from day one. This way the people who really know the day-to-day running of the business have the opportunity to ensure that the new system will meet their and the organization’s requirements when it’s delivered.

Antonio Nigrelli's picture Antonio Nigrelli
DevOps team bumping fists 7 Ways to Change the Culture for DevOps Success

The hard part of successful DevOps isn’t implementing the technology; it's ensuring you have the right culture in your organization. You need to break down silos and align competing priorities and individual incentives to gain real benefits from DevOps. Move beyond thinking about technology alone and look at the people side of the equation. Here are seven ways to create a successful team that delivers the benefits of DevOps.

Steve Jones's picture Steve Jones

Better Software Magazine Articles

How Can I Develop the Ability to Collaborate?

In this installment of FAQ, SQE Trainer Bob Payne and consultant Ryan Olivett answer one of the questions students ask them most often.

Bob Payne's picture Bob Payne Ryan Olivett
Strengthen Your Discovery Muscle

An organization shouldn’t spend all its time building its delivery muscle without simultaneously building its discovery muscle. In fact, successful software teams deliver great products because they invest in discovery. Learn how to expand your innovation and strengthen your discovery muscle.

Agile Teamwork: Three Ways to Minimize Handoffs

Rather than rely on large handoffs between specialties, high-performing Scrum teams learn to do a little bit of everything all the time during a sprint. To do this effectively, teams must make three changes: shift from writing about requirements to talking about them, reduce the size of handoffs and make them more frequently, and pay more attention to the size of the product backlog items that they bring into their sprints.

Mike Cohn's picture Mike Cohn
Creative Agility

Many new products being developed require the contribution of artists and other such "creatives," but artists often view the creative process as an organic thing that cannot be analyzed, dissected, or reduced to a set of defined practices without killing it. This article explores barriers such as these to the introduction of agile methods and how these barriers can be overcome.

Clinton  Keith 's picture Clinton Keith

Interviews

Melissa Benua Whole Team Quality: A Conversation with Melissa Benua
Video

Melissa Benua, director of engineering at mParticle, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about the importance of whole team quality, how to get started using the test pyramid, and how developers can start writing testable code.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Selena Delesie Leadership Lessons to Bolster Your Software Team: An Interview with Selena Delesie
Video

In this interview, visionary speaker Selena Delesie explains how successful teams embrace specific principles, including listening deeply, believing people truly matter, having an addiction to learning, serving others, flowing through change, moving through fear, and following joy.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Jeff Morgan How Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Agile Impact Business: An Interview with Jeff Morgan
Video

In this interview, chief technology officer and cofounder of LeanDog, Jeff “Cheezy” Morgan, explains how continuous integration and agile are impacting not only technology groups, but the businesses that the people in the technology groups are helping to enable, support, and develop for.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Hans Buwalda Bigger and Better Test Design through Automation: An Interview with Hans Buwalda
Video

In this interview, LogiGear's Hans Buwalda explains how better test design can lead to improved test automation and can make the difference between automation success and failure. He details why successful automated testing is a test design challenge, not a technical challenge.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine

Conference Presentations

Agile Dev West 2018, Better Software West 2018, DevOps West 2018 Three-Minute Improv Games to Improve Your Teams
Slideshow

The problem with many agile teams is that they simply never become a team. This often manifests itself as team members feeling unsafe or not quite trusting each other. This workshop will show you how the same techniques improv theater troupes use to improve collaboration, creativity, and communication can be used to help agile teams, too. The three-minute improv warm-up games Wayde Stallmann will lead you through in this session—including improv's famous "yes, and" technique—will help you learn to establish trust, improve collaboration, and learn how to provide a safe environment for your team to bond. You also will get a flier explaining the top twenty improv games, allowing you to leave with actionable material to use immediately upon returning to work so that you can help your team reach its full potential.

Wayde Stallmann
STAREAST 2018 Make Your Team Awesome—Yes, You Can!
Slideshow

The key to creating high-performing teams is psychological safety—the ability to be vulnerable in front of others even when they hold diverse viewpoints, and the opportunity to take risks and trust that everything will be OK. However, creating this safety is easier said than done. Maaret Pyhäjärvi shares her story of working with software development and test teams to enable them to be awesome. She explains how to reinforce the positive while enabling great software product development by empowering others in your team. Maaret explores how to be brave when others are not, and how to care for and build safety for others. She describes being a catalyst for your team, emphasizing learning—always with safety as a prerequisite. Today, Maaret uses her position as a tester not only to test every part of the software but also to build the collaboration habits of the team, delivering actionable information to improve product quality.

Maaret Pyhäjärvi
Collocated East Logo Teamwork Tools: Movement Games for Collaboration and Creativity
Slideshow

Are you looking for new ways to invigorate your teams? Do retrospectives seem stale? Do story breakdown meetings feel flat? On the other hand, maybe your teams are humming and you’re looking for additional variety. The research is clear—movement matters, and play stimulates creativity. 

Andrew Smith
Overcome DevOps Adoption Barriers to Accelerate Software Delivery
Slideshow

Many organizations want to create systems delivered in a DevOps framework with diverse services implemented via API building blocks. Chris Haddad says that people, processes, and tools often hinder a team's ability to comply with security policies, streamline collaboration, and rapidly...

Chris Haddad, WSO2

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