People and Teams
 |
Do You Use Only 10% of Your Brain? You’ve probably heard the claim that we use only 10% of our brains. That's a total myth, but it’s not hard to understand why it would take hold: Who hasn’t wondered how we could do more in less time and with less effort? The reality is that most everyone can become more productive by following some simple tips. |
|
 |
3 Tactics to Stay Productive with an Agile Schedule The usual productivity tips apply best to those working in a typical office with typical hours. What if you don’t work within a structured schedule? How can you stay productive when work ebbs and flows or occurs outside the typical nine-to-five? Here are three ways to be productive when your schedule is unpredictable. |
|
 |
Top 10 TechWell Insights Stories of 2019 Career development was on many software practitioners' minds in 2019, as some of our top stories were about having a technical lead on a Scrum team and making the switch from quality assurance to quality engineering. Stories about new ideas such as DevOps and continuous testing also ranked high. Check out the roundup. |
|
 |
Joking Around and Taking Work Seriously You may be totally serious about your job yet give the impression that you’re not. Laughter and fun help some people tackle the high-priority, stress-inducing problems they face every day, but it can also be misinterpreted by others that they aren't taking their work seriously. How are people perceiving your behavior? |
|
 |
Collaborating with a Highly Distributed Team Being distributed can cause challenges for team collaboration, such as insufficient communication and a lack of visibility. However, advancements in tools, technology, and best practices have helped to lessen some of those challenges. Here are four ways to make collaborating with distributed teams more seamless. |
|
 |
Don’t Ask for Permission or Forgiveness—Use an Agile Alternative Some teams get around bottlenecks by taking a “better to ask forgiveness than permission” approach. This may be expedient, but it doesn’t provide a path to changing the organizational dynamic, and it can lead to wrong decisions when wider input is advisable. A more agile way is to take an “I intend to” approach. |
|
 |
When Customers Attack: Dealing with Rude Clients It seems like the only way some customers know how to communicate is to accuse, complain, and verbally attack. This only gets worse if there are delays. But when you do your best to build trust with customers early on, they are more likely to accept explanations about setbacks, even if they don’t fully understand them. |
|
 |
4 Tips to Refocus Stale Standups The daily standup is supposed to get everyone on the same page and make teams more productive and efficient. But it’s easy for this short meeting to become stale and stop providing any real benefit. Here are four ways to get out of the slump of merely delivering status updates and re-energize your daily standups. |
