People & Teams

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Agile icon 5 Ways Agile Testing Is Different from Traditional Testing

It’s the distinctions between agile and traditional software development approaches, as well as the adaptability of testers in these very different environments, that makes agile testing different from traditional testing. Agile demands more from its testers, and, in turn, it values them more, too. Let’s look at five main things that make an agile tester’s life different from that of a traditional tester.

Nishi Grover's picture Nishi Grover
Managing for Happiness: Games, Tools, and Practices to Motivate Any Team Book Review: Managing for Happiness: Games, Tools, and Practices to Motivate Any Team

Jurgen Appelo’s useful and fun-to-read book Managing for Happiness: Games, Tools, and Practices to Motivate Any Team gives you concrete tools to identify ways to help your team be happier and to create environments where people can thrive and be more productive. Despite the word managing being in the title, the book is a beneficial read for anyone.

Steve Berczuk's picture Steve Berczuk
implementing gears Getting Employees On Board when Implementing Change Management

Change is a difficult but important part of business. It can be most difficult on the employees, but if you involve them in the planning process and make an effort to understand their points of view, you can mitigate resistance and facilitate the experience for everyone. This article deals specifically with ERP implementation, but its advice is useful for any change management situation.

RK Prasad's picture RK Prasad
mob programming in action Try Mob Programming to Inspire Team Growth

If you're familiar with pair programming, you know how much it can increase code quality and encourage developers to learn from each other. You should try mob programming—the same concept, but with an entire team of up to eight people and only one keyboard. It's a great way to explore new techniques and solve problems as a team.

Mark Richards's picture Mark Richards
Swiss army knife Want True Agility? Foster General Skills over Specialization

Many organizations enforce systems that stifle flexibility by promoting specialization. But encouraging learning new skills and expanding outside core responsibilities promotes flow over resource efficiency, helps cover gaps in time of crisis, and lets you build a team that can deliver continually at a sustainable pace. It's the age of the generalist.

Phil Gadzinski's picture Phil Gadzinski
hands holding soil with plant The Values Essential to a Scrum Software Development Practice

The Scrum Guide was updated recently to make values an explicit part of the framework: commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect. When these values are embodied and lived by the team, the Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation come to life and build trust for everyone. Is your team practicing them?

Ryan Ripley's picture Ryan Ripley
ladder up into the clouds 4 Secrets to Successfully Scaling Agile Tech Teams

There comes a time for every successful tech team to expand. But how do you scale in an agile way without losing productivity? Here are four secrets to successfully managing this transition, from deliberately choosing an incremental growth process to hiring new team members and retaining efficient communication.

Debbie Madden's picture Debbie Madden
circle of continuous arrows Learn Agile Techniques to Become a More Valuable Tester

Agile is still on the rise, with many organizations that have been successful at the team level looking to scale their adoption. Consequently, it's important for testers to have practical application of agile techniques. You should know how to create tests to optimize maximum test coverage, have interpersonal skills, and successfully build relationships within the team.

Leanne Howard's picture Leanne Howard
man speaking into megaphone Speak Up: The Key to Agile Success

You can learn all the theoretical agile principles and best practices, but you still may not be agile. To be truly agile, you must also communicate and collaborate with your team—and this means speaking up. Even if you're not a natural extrovert, there are plenty of ways you can contribute during planning, sprints, and retrospectives to make your product and process better.

Brian Everett's picture Brian Everett
start, continue, and stop doing signs When Postmortems Meet Retrospectives: Improving Your Agile Process

If you want secure, reliable systems, you need all stakeholders actively communicating. This means involving both IT operations and developers in discussions after deployments, to ascertain if anything went wrong and can be avoided, and what went well or could be refined. Integrating your postmortems and retrospectives facilitates collaboration and improves processes.

Bob Aiello's picture Bob Aiello

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