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Team Improvement: Management Desires vs Team Reality
Several years ago, a client, Alex, asked me, “What's wrong with this team? They don't want to learn anything.” I was surprised. I asked him for more information. “Well, when I ask them to use TDD, they...
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Teams Need to See Each Other—Eventually
We've all heard of big organizations where the top management said, “No need to ever be back in the office. Work from home, as long as you want.” And, the Wall Street Journal has this article, Business...
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Managers Make the Real Product Quality Decisions
In a conversation about product quality, the product owner said, “If the testers found the problems faster, we would be done faster.” The tester said, “If the developers didn't put so many problems in,...
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Managers Need to Work as Teams
We hear about agile teams, in the form of product or feature teams. However, too many managers still work independently. That’s a problem when the teams have organizational problems a single manager...
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Why Very Few (If Any) People Are “10x” Developers—Or Managers
Steve, a software development manager, thought John was a “10x” developer. He explained that John could: Coded faster than anyone else. Write and release full applications over a weekend. “Mind-meld”...
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Leadership Tip #10: Commit Coherent & Meaningful Work to a Team
Many managers feel the need to get more and more done. They feel pressure from customers and salespeople for more features or products. Or the managers might feel the need for more revenue. So they...
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Why Aren’t We Better at XP (or Almost Anything)? “Stop Making It Harder”
There was a Twitter discussion about XP not having crossed the chasm. Someone Lula Rodrigues posted this wonderful Kent Beck talk about that here:...
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Define Your Onboarding plan for New Hires to Create Personal and Team Success
Tim, a first-level manager, asked me, “Is it reasonable for someone to quit after just a week? With no notice?” “No. What happened?” “Sam, a new developer, started on Monday. He told me today, Friday,...
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Leadership Tip 21: How to Know if People Are Working Hard
Too many managers don't know how to manage remote people. Worse, those managers, or their organizations, don't trust people to do a good job. The organization installs spyware to see if people are...
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A Short Test to See if Your Job Will Survive AI
Every minute, it seems as if someone is talking about how great ChatGPT is. It's going to revolutionize the world! I agree— I am sure AI will revolutionize the world. At some point. But I think it's...
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