communication
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Two Tales of Sloppy Service (and Their Very Different Outcomes)This story details two tales of sloppy service—but they have very different endings. In one case, the company representative refuses to acknowledge error or make up for inconvenience, but in the second, the rep apologizes and goes above and beyond to make it up. Which do you think retains customers? | 
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Exploring Your Beliefs about Your Customers Have you and your coworkers ever discussed your beliefs about your customers? Or questioned those beliefs? You may surprised at the discrepancy between what you think your customers want and what they actually want. It's a good idea to reconsider every now and then and shake up the status quo. |
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Meetings: The Good, the Bad, and the UglyMeetings are a crucial part of the communication process, but they endure a lot of ridicule. You can’t do away with them entirely—meetings are essential to an agile process like Scrum. Rather than avoiding all meetings, it’s better to work at making the times you meet with people more effective. | 
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Leverage Emails as Your AmbassadorsWe are often communicating with people we have never met in person. In these cases especially, it's important for our emails to convey accuracy, transparency, tactfulness, and preciseness. It can help if every time you hit Send, you think of that email as an “ambassador” going out on your behalf. | 
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Traits of a Successful Tester That Will Never ChangeThe role of the software tester has been subject to a lot of change in recent years. Some traits that used to make a tester successful are no longer as relevant, and some new traits have been added. But there is a set that will never change—these characteristics are great for a tester in any age. |
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Creating High-Performance, Cross-Functional DevOps TeamsDevOps provides strategies to automate and streamline your application build, package, and deployment. Excellent tools and technology are imperative, but even more essential is leading your team to work together effectively. Read on to learn what makes a high-performance, cross-functional team. | 
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What You Should Do When Someone Pushes Your Buttons Everybody gets angry once in a while. That, by itself, is no big deal. It's when you respond in a way that's out of proportion to the circumstances that anger becomes a problem—and in the workplace, there can be big consequences. The next time someone pushes your buttons, read this first. |
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“So, How’s It Going?” Thoughts on Reporting Project ProgressPeople near the top of your org chart often want project status updates to be short and sweet. But oversimplified measures risk miscommunication. Be thoughtful when someone asks, “So, how’s it going?” If you summarize too much, you can lose context, and these managers may feel misled later. | 
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