teams
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Making the Most of Your Team’s CreativityWhen people on your team have creative ideas, how do you decide which ones are worth pursuing? Research suggests that neither an idea's creator nor the creator's manager is the best person to predict whether an idea will be a success. Read on to learn what you should do to foster and evaluate creative ideas. | 
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What’s a Tech Lead? Decoding This Developer RoleThe role of technical lead can be hard to define, and in many cases people accept the role without knowing its definition. Because new tech leads are used to programming, many focus too much on the technical aspects and not enough on the people and the team. Read on to learn what's required of this role. |
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How and When to Incorporate New Software Tools into Your Team Change isn’t always necessary—or even good, for that matter—but when is it actually the right time to incorporate a new tool, language, or piece of technology that might be taking the market by storm into your business? How do you identify the risks? |
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Drawing Motivation for Software Development Teams from Unlikely PlacesWhat do football or a submarine command have to do with agile success? At first, you might say, "Nothing." But football coaches, submarine captains, and their teams all have to establish a clear vision, analyze and prepare, and manage risks and adapt. Metaphors from other fields can motivate agile teams. |
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How to Deal with an Underperforming Employee (without Making It Awkward)Sometimes, an employee's ability just falls short of what your team needs. Talking to an employee about his performance can be uncomfortable, but it doesn't need to be. You need to make sure they know what’s expected of them, what kind of improvements you’re seeking, and how you’ll gauge their improvements. | 
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Who’s Responsible for What? Use a RACI Matrix to Keep It StraightAs projects get larger and more complex, roles and responsibilities can become confusing. To clarify, teams can create a RACI matrix: a chart that shows who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for any work product. Each role has a different level of authority, so everyone knows their duty. | 
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Accelerating Your DevOps Processes with AgileEveryone wants to accelerate the application development process. Agile has done a lot to help, but going faster without understanding whether we are going in the right direction has a significant risk of us getting lost. To really achieve development velocity, you need to understand agile in a pragmatic way. | 
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What's in the Winter 2016 Issue of Better Software Magazine?This issue of Better Software is loaded with feature articles about writing a superior web API, taking the plunge into test automation, the three pillars of agile quality, innovative gamification, and assessing and improving your DevOps procedures. Read on to learn more about this year's first issue. | 
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