Better Software East 2016 - Projects & Teams
Wednesday, November 16
Managing Technical People and Teams: You Can Do It Well
Technical teams are complex and managing them is challenging. Technical and organizational leadership often collide, and balancing the two is vital to an organization’s success. Furthermore, it is uncommon to find an individual who possesses strong technical and organizational leadership capabilities. AshLea Allberry shares her experience with unique teams and her efforts to find a uniform answer to team structure and management. AshLea describes her experience managing creatives, their greatest strengths and their deepest complexities. Once she covers the...
Enable Your Workers … You’ll Be Amazed What They Can Do
It’s as true today as it was in 1986 when W. Edwards Deming published Out of the Crisis and wrote, “Remove barriers that rob people … of their right to pride of workmanship.” Companies everywhere implement processes, hire staff, and install tools to help them meet their business objectives. Many organizations strive to have engaged workers, efficient processes, and effective tools. However, Bob Jarvis says that, rather than doing the real work they were hired to perform, workers often end up spending too much time each day fighting obstacles related to...
Evangelize for Your Project, Team, or Cause—No Matter What Role You Play
Whether you’re a developer, tester, ScrumMaster, CTO, or CEO, you know you have to listen to the needs of your customers and team; accept the fact that they are going to change their minds; and respond, adapt, tap dance, iterate, raise your voice, stand up, and delight your audience in order to ship out the best software of your entire life. Can I get a witness?! Jonathan Silva shares evangelizing strategies that can help you inspire at any level—whether a Fortune 500 company or a startup software company. These approaches include developing your point of view,...
Build Adaptable Teams: The Marine Corps Way
Shrinking budgets, increased workloads, and ever-changing demands challenge today’s product teams to adapt and learn to do more with less. Since its birth in 1775, the United States Marine Corps has faced similar trials. The key to the Corps’ survival—not unlike that of a product team—has been its ability to adapt to change. Anne Steiner uses the Corps’ leadership philosophy and its training techniques and her experience as a Marine Corps non-commissioned officer as a framework for understanding how Marines adapt, decentralize decision making, and build leaders at...
Thursday, November 17
Stop Saying No … Start Saying Throwdown
Have you ever been on a team and said, “We should try [insert crazy idea here]” only to immediately hear “No!” from a team member, manager, or coach? Talk about stifling innovation. To prevent this, Anthony Crain says that their teams are adopting a new philosophy. Stop saying No … start saying Throwdown! Using this idea, they can distinguish between a favorite way and a better way. “My story writing technique is better than yours.” Oh yeah? Prove it! “My estimation technique is better than yours.” Oh yeah? Prove it! “SAFe is better than traditional...
Teamwork Tools: Movement Games for Collaboration and Creativity
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. Join Andrew Smith as he takes you through a series of movement games that are lively and fun, while exploring how these practices can be applied to promote collaboration and creativity within teams. Discover how to use play to shift perspectives and enable new insights within your...