teams

Beware of Serial Status MeetingsStandup meetings are great in many instances. But if you're calling serial status meetings, you may find that people will stop attending. To engage employees and address issues quicker, you may want to try lean coffee or a problem-solving meeting. Read on for tips on involving your team.
How to Work with Defensive People

It’s irritating to work with people who are always defensive. These are the people who, when things don’t work out as planned, are quick to blame circumstances, bad luck, or the people they work with. But if you can gain the trust of defensive people, you and the work you do together will benefit.

The Perfect Recipe for STARWEST

Much like a great recipe, the STARWEST conferences have added a dash of this and a pinch of that over the years so our attendees have the best learning experience we can provide. Let’s take a look at who the chefs are and what they do to cook up a successful conference like STARWEST.

Are You a Bad Boss? Here’s How to Know

If reading articles about how to be a good boss were all it took to be one, there wouldn’t be so many articles about how to survive a horrible boss. The trouble is that the bad bosses usually don’t know they’re bad. But there are clues. Read on to see if you exhibit any of these bad-boss behaviors.

The Ins and Outs of DevOpsOf course DevOps focuses on enhancing the working relationship between development and operations, but it just as easily includes QA, data security, or any other silo of smart people who need to collaborate more effectively. This requires an understanding of DevOps principles. Read on for more.
Effective—and Possibly Crazy—Tips for Persuading Anyone

Not a day goes by that you don’t have occasion to try to persuade others, whether it’s for something big like canceling a project or something inconsequential like deciding where to go for lunch. Read on for tips to help convince people and get them on your side, both on a team and outside work.

Stop Being Difficult! How to Deal with Passive Aggressive StakeholdersProject teams have to learn to manage the difficult personalities they encounter on a project. The key is to identify which type of personality you are dealing with, then quickly apply approaches to smooth over the situation. Here are some tips for handling passive aggressive stakeholders' concerns.
Tapping into the Power of Introverts in IT

Introverts—those who rarely talk to others, seldom engage socially, and answer questions only when asked—can be the strongest contributors on a team, but only if they’re engaged effectively. Here are some tactics that can help leverage the enormous strengths of the quiet ones on your team.