collaboration

Articles

Business Engagement How the Right Business Engagement Can Lead to Transformation “Happy Ever After”

Winning the hearts and minds of users should be a priority of business transformation from day one. This way the people who really know the day-to-day running of the business have the opportunity to ensure that the new system will meet their and the organization’s requirements when it’s delivered.

Antonio Nigrelli's picture Antonio Nigrelli
Tester and developer shaking hands across a table How to Collaborate on a Brand-New QA Team

As a quality analyst, when you raise a bug, developers sometimes react as if you were personally attacking their job. The situation can be even more difficult if you are starting a new QA team, where you will work with people who have never had the quality assurance component. Here is some advice for ways you can be effective when you’re starting on a team that has never worked with quality analysts before.

Juan Pablo Aguirre's picture Juan Pablo Aguirre
Coding brackets Mob Programming for Low-Code and No-Code Development

In low-code and no-code development, as the names suggest, developers do less actual coding—they create applications through GUIs and configuration instead of traditional programming. But mob programming is still a useful practice, because the entire team can clarify requirements, discuss development and test strategies, and implement the best ideas. Everyone gets to learn and contribute.

Arun Kumar Dutta's picture Arun Kumar Dutta
Testing team standing around a computer and smiling 3 Methods for Better Communication and More Effective Testing

Successful delivery of software requires the entire team, so it’s imperative that everyone choose their words carefully so they convey what they really mean, are sensitive to others’ feelings, and consider all aspects of a problem. Here are three questions to remember when communicating about your software testing projects to ensure you’re considering the power of words.

Ajay Balamurugadas's picture Ajay Balamurugadas

Better Software Magazine Articles

How Can I Develop the Ability to Collaborate?

In this installment of FAQ, SQE Trainer Bob Payne and consultant Ryan Olivett answer one of the questions students ask them most often.

Bob Payne's picture Bob Payne Ryan Olivett
Strengthen Your Discovery Muscle

An organization shouldn’t spend all its time building its delivery muscle without simultaneously building its discovery muscle. In fact, successful software teams deliver great products because they invest in discovery. Learn how to expand your innovation and strengthen your discovery muscle.

Agile Teamwork: Three Ways to Minimize Handoffs

Rather than rely on large handoffs between specialties, high-performing Scrum teams learn to do a little bit of everything all the time during a sprint. To do this effectively, teams must make three changes: shift from writing about requirements to talking about them, reduce the size of handoffs and make them more frequently, and pay more attention to the size of the product backlog items that they bring into their sprints.

Mike Cohn's picture Mike Cohn
Creative Agility

Many new products being developed require the contribution of artists and other such "creatives," but artists often view the creative process as an organic thing that cannot be analyzed, dissected, or reduced to a set of defined practices without killing it. This article explores barriers such as these to the introduction of agile methods and how these barriers can be overcome.

Clinton  Keith 's picture Clinton Keith

Interviews

Melissa Benua Whole Team Quality: A Conversation with Melissa Benua
Video

Melissa Benua, director of engineering at mParticle, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about the importance of whole team quality, how to get started using the test pyramid, and how developers can start writing testable code.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Shachar Schiff Communication Is Everything: A Conversation with Shachar Schiff

Shachar Schiff, founder and principal consultant at BadTesting, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about the recent rebrand of BadTesting, the four archetypes he uses to help customers, and the universal importance of communication.

Continue the conversation with Shachar (@Shak) and Owen (@owen) on the TechWell Hub (http://hub.techwell.com/)!

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Marcia Buzzella Improving Communication and Social Skills: An Interview with Marcia Buzzella
Video

Marcia Buzzella, an independent leadership consultant and strengths coach, discusses the importance of communication and social skills in a business atmosphere. She offers advice on tools to recognize your weaknesses in those areas and how to work toward improving your effectiveness.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Marcia Buzzella Why Testers, Developers, and Managers Need Better Communication: An Interview with Marcia Buzzella
Video

In this interview, Marcia Buzzella, a leadership consultant and strengths coach, explains how each member of a software development team can better communicate with one another, and why testers need to understand how what they’re saying is being perceived.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine

Conference Presentations

Agile Dev West 2018, Better Software West 2018, DevOps West 2018 Three-Minute Improv Games to Improve Your Teams
Slideshow

The problem with many agile teams is that they simply never become a team. This often manifests itself as team members feeling unsafe or not quite trusting each other. This workshop will show you how the same techniques improv theater troupes use to improve collaboration, creativity, and communication can be used to help agile teams, too. The three-minute improv warm-up games Wayde Stallmann will lead you through in this session—including improv's famous "yes, and" technique—will help you learn to establish trust, improve collaboration, and learn how to provide a safe environment for your team to bond. You also will get a flier explaining the top twenty improv games, allowing you to leave with actionable material to use immediately upon returning to work so that you can help your team reach its full potential.

Wayde Stallmann
STAREAST 2018 Make Your Team Awesome—Yes, You Can!
Slideshow

The key to creating high-performing teams is psychological safety—the ability to be vulnerable in front of others even when they hold diverse viewpoints, and the opportunity to take risks and trust that everything will be OK. However, creating this safety is easier said than done. Maaret Pyhäjärvi shares her story of working with software development and test teams to enable them to be awesome. She explains how to reinforce the positive while enabling great software product development by empowering others in your team. Maaret explores how to be brave when others are not, and how to care for and build safety for others. She describes being a catalyst for your team, emphasizing learning—always with safety as a prerequisite. Today, Maaret uses her position as a tester not only to test every part of the software but also to build the collaboration habits of the team, delivering actionable information to improve product quality.

Maaret Pyhäjärvi
Collocated East Logo Teamwork Tools: Movement Games for Collaboration and Creativity
Slideshow

Are you looking for new ways to invigorate your teams? Do retrospectives seem stale? Do story breakdown meetings feel flat? On the other hand, maybe your teams are humming and you’re looking for additional variety. The research is clear—movement matters, and play stimulates creativity. 

Andrew Smith
Overcome DevOps Adoption Barriers to Accelerate Software Delivery
Slideshow

Many organizations want to create systems delivered in a DevOps framework with diverse services implemented via API building blocks. Chris Haddad says that people, processes, and tools often hinder a team's ability to comply with security policies, streamline collaboration, and rapidly...

Chris Haddad, WSO2

StickyMinds is a TechWell community.

Through conferences, training, consulting, and online resources, TechWell helps you develop and deliver great software every day.