personal improvement

Inside-the-Box Ideas about Outside-the-Box Thinking

Some people don’t get outside-the-box thinking. The idea is not to do things the same old way, but as this definition puts it, to do “thinking that moves away in diverging directions so as to involve a variety of aspects and which sometimes leads to novel ideas and solutions.”

Approaches for Effective Meetings

An interesting paradox many project teams face is that while collaboration is highly valued, collaboration often takes the form of one of the biggest time wasters humans have ever invented—meetings. Kent McDonald explores effective approaches to leading an effective meeting.

The Honest Challenge of Avoiding DishonestyHonesty is a serious matter given the amount of cheating and dishonesty that occurs not just in the workplace but also in prestigious universities, military academies, and among people in the public eye. If you can be as honest as possible, you avoid the tangles that lying and cheating cause.
How to Respond to Rude People

It’s bad enough contending with rudeness outside of work. But when you have to deal with it at work—whether from customers, managers, coworkers, or anyone else—it’s especially annoying. Naomi Karten offers some helpful tips to respond to rude people.

Is Software Testing a Thankless Job? QA teams often get blamed for things that are out of their control. These three issues are the biggest pain points: missed bugs, missed deadlines, and poor quality
Moving Beyond a Superficial Understanding of Agile

While agile is almost universally hailed, the majority of executives only have a "superficial" understanding of the methodology. Steve Vaughn explains that this level of understanding by upper management is a serious impediment to the necessary culture change that needs to take place.

Why Do We Make Bad Decisions?In the workplace, not a day goes by that you don’t have to make a decision, or more likely several. How many of them subsequently proved to be bad decisions? Naomi Karten writes why it's worth considering how these decisions can affect your professional and personal life.
How Executives and Developers Can Communicate Better

Top-level executives often have a hard time communicating what they want from their development team. But there’s a way the two groups can work as one.