In a technical coaching context, modeling effective communication is my primary tactic. I try to model asking more than telling, asking only one question, saying more with fewer words, keeping my camera on, and not apologizing when my dogs invade my camera (I instead introduce them). Teams also benefit from learning to explicitly integrate “play” time, doing small entertaining activities and games together.
Read MoreIf you have heard of XP, you probably think of Test-Driven Development and Pair Programming, two of the most challenging XP practices both in ideology and in execution. You may not know it, but even if you have never even attempted these two contentious practices, your software team is probably already doing several of the other practices. Here are the top three I suspect you are already doing.
Read MoreScrum is not your process, evidenced primarily by the fact that it is devoid of any business domain. Additionally, it contains timed events within which your team can execute and refine your process, but does not instruct you how to execute that process. For example, the Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event with only a couple generic directives: The Development Team inspects progress toward the Sprint Goal, and makes a plan for the next 24 hours. Though it offers an example, the Scrum Guide does not say how you should conduct this daily event, only the constraints and objectives of the event focused on inspecting and adapting the team's work.
Read MoreI have incredible respect for the individuals on my last team, so I became actively excited when the opportunity arose to disagree. I knew my teammates would listen to and try to clarify my ideas, and I would afford them the same dignity. The result of such a debate rarely ended in us agreeing on my or anyone's idea as it was originally presented. The process of clarification and debate would polish each idea until one was clearly the best idea given what we presently knew.
Read MoreKnowing that empirically we can, in fact, increase our intelligence is a crucial first step to self-improvement. If you see a direction to go and believe there is ground you can cover to get there, you can target your weak areas with practice and feedback and make progress.
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