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How to Leave the Office When Your Office Is Your Home

Remember that movie Groundhog Day? Where Bill Murray experiences the same day over and over and over and heartwarming hilarity ensues? Working from home can feel like a lot like that (minus the heartwarming hilarity). The hours meld together because there’s no natural divider to separate work time from personal time.

Maybe that’s ok with you. There are plenty of people who prefer to blend their work and personal lives. The type who walk away from their laptop before five o’clock, then are perfectly happy to answer emails from their phone while they make dinner. These folks are known as “work-life integrators”. But many others, myself included, need to feel like they’ve left work for the day before they can relax. We’re known as “work-life segmentors.”

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Everything I Need to Know About Coping With a Pandemic, I Learned From the Agile Manifesto

We’re many weeks into the COVID-19 crisis and, I don’t know about you, but things still feel chaotic to me. Part of it is trying to work from home while also homeschooling a 6-year old and 9-year old. Part of it is trying to keep up with all the recommendations and requirements from our public health officials. The big reason things feel chaotic to me, though, is all the uncertainty.

At times like these, our impulse is to impose order – even if that order exists only in our heads. We need ways of understanding the unsettling things we observe. Tools for mentally organizing what we read in the news. A framework, if you will. Some people may look to religious texts for this, but as a Certified Scrum Master and nerd, I’ve been thinking about the Agile Manifesto.

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How to Work From Home When Your Kids Are Home, Too

Well folks, here we are. Word came down over the weekend that all schools here in the Great Bold North (otherwise known as Minnesota) would close for a few weeks. Maybe longer. Our district has been prepping a remote learning plan, and while that’s being finalized, the kids basically get some bonus snow days. But my husband and I? No snow days for us. We’ll need to be working from home as normal – or as close to normal as we can manage.

Fortunately for us, working from home is our normal, as we’re both full-time remote employees. So we’ve had some practice dealing with the kiddos being at the house with us on days school is closed for parent-teacher conferences, curriculum development, and, y’know, actual snow. If, like us, you’re suddenly a stay-at-home parent and stay-at-home employee, here are a few ways to make this experience less stressful.

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5 Questions About the Potential (and Limits) of AI With John Maeda

Computers can’t think the way you and I can – at least, not yet. AI technology is getting closer every day, raising fundamental questions about ethics, design, and what it means to be alive. In his book, How To Speak Machine, designer and technologist John Maeda acknowledges the concerns many laypersons have around AI: not only do robots look and sound increasingly lifelike, but they respond to input so quickly and have such stamina that we humans start to feel threatened. Nobody likes the idea of being outpaced (or replaced) by their own creation.

You may also like: The Rise of Machine Learning

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How Should You Structure Your Engineering Team?

Team structure makes a huge difference!

It’s been a few years since the “Spotify Model” became the latest trend for structuring an engineering team. Like its predecessors, the model based on tribes and squads has some pitfalls. How to structure an engineering team is a question that’s been covered at length, from the strengths and weaknesses of common team structures to a matrix of organization based on risk and scale to why you should choose your model.

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Five Questions About Motivation With Daniel Pink

The Industrial Revolution codified extrinsic motivation (rewards and punishments) as a way to make sure employees showed up on time and did their jobs well. Today’s jobs don’t look like those of the late 1800s or even the mid-1900s. Instead of building widgets on an assembly line, we’re building technology and services and experiences. Nonetheless, employers’ approach to motivation remains largely unchanged.

Ten years ago, author and speaker Daniel Pink made a splash with his best-selling book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”. In it, he put forth a novel idea: that creating a work environment centered on autonomy, mastery, and purpose — also known as “intrinsic motivation” — improves employees’ performance more than external rewards like bonuses or the threat of dismissal.

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What You Need to Know About Project Teams in a Changing World

In the past, nearly every project team had members who all report to the same manager and shared similar job functions. A lot of today's project teams look like that, too. But to quote Samuel L. Jackson, hold on to your butts. Because here comes "the Hollywood effect".

The "Hollywood Effect" in full view.

The name comes from the world of film production. After producers secure funding for a project, they enlist a cross-functional team of collaborators to bring it to life - think set design, makeup, wardrobe, sound, lighting, etc. Costume designers, lighting techs, and gaffers all have separate chains of command within their function (different unions, even) but they share a common purpose: to make the best movie possible. The team is formed specifically for that production and disbands when the project is complete.