Posted on

Agile Adoption Patterns: 6 Common Breaking Points and How To Fix Them

A few years ago, when companies started embracing Agile, they would bring in a consultancy firm to help come up with a strategy for the shift. They would hire some Scrum Masters, provide basic training to their teams, and proudly declare: “We are Agile now.”

But that statement couldn’t be further from the truth. More than a methodology, Agile is a philosophy, and adopting it means that everyone involved should get on board with a complete and profound transformation. A transformation that, oftentimes, fails.

Posted on

How To Promote a Growth Mindset in the Workplace

I have worked with two different kinds of leaders and managers over the years. The one who believes in fixed abilities and promotes a fixed mindset “those who don’t perform well can never do better” and the other who believes in growing those abilities thereby promoting a growth mindset “people can be coached into improving their skills.” 

The first kind engages with the workplace to boost their self-esteem, establish their superiority and prove their smartness. They focus on their employees' weaknesses, refuse to coach them, blame others for failure, do not seek feedback, divide people into competent or incompetent and hire for natural talent instead of looking for ways to grow talent within their organization. They praise people for their intelligence while failing to take notice of those who show improvement through effort and hard work. After all, their fixed mindset leads them with the belief that people can’t get any better, and that makes them stick with their initial impression about them.  

Posted on

What Is Scaled Agile Framework? Lifecycle and Process

Enterprises are becoming more agile by shifting to agile methodologies, but usually, it is seen that larger enterprises are change-resistant due to several reasons such as deep-rooted cultural issues, and policy- and process-based barriers. Despite these reasons, some enterprises have been successful in seeking the benefits of agile development with the help of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Let’s now try to understand this framework in more detail.

What Is a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)?

It is an extension of agile methodology that helps larger organizations overcome issues that negatively impact project success. It offers large organizations a framework for becoming more agile so that their deliverables take less time-to-market. It contains a set of principles, processes, and best practices that help enterprises to adopt agile methodologies, such as Lean, Kanban, and Scrum, to develop and deliver high-quality products and services faster. It is built on three pillars i.e. team, program, and portfolio.

Posted on

How I Used Hotglue and Databox to Monitor All My KPIs in One Place

Being able to visualize your company's KPIs (key performance indicators) is one of the most essential components of understanding your business. But monitoring them across many different platforms can be an absolute hassle.

You have to check how many users are visiting your site via Google Analytics, how users are interacting with your site through Mixpanel, and how your recurring revenue is trending in Stripe. I hated having to deal with this for my business, so I decided to find a solution that would let me see all of this data in one place.

Posted on

Dos and Don’ts for Better Communication in Virtual Work Environment

In today’s world, soft skills have become a hard skill when it comes to the workplace. Especially in this virtual work environment we are in today, communication plays a key role. Misunderstanding and misinterpretation leads to major setbacks while working from home, where you have nobody around you to correct you. So, here are some tips to improve your communications. 

1. Speak Less, Listen More

Some people listen just to reply. Instead, try listening to understand. Listen more and speak only what is needed. If you follow this, even the little you speak will be heard and your opinion will be respected by people.

Posted on

What Is DevOps Culture?

At its essence, a DevOps culture involves closer collaboration and a shared responsibility between development and operations for the products they create and maintain. This helps companies align their people, processes, and tools toward a more unified customer focus. 

It involves cultivating multidisciplinary teams who take accountability for the entire lifecycle of a product. DevOps teams work autonomously and embrace a software engineering culture, workflow, and toolset that elevates operational requirements to the same level of importance as architecture, design and development. The understanding that developers who build it, also run it, brings developers closer to the user, with a greater understanding of user requirements and needs. With operations teams more involved in the development process, they can add maintenance requirements and customer needs for a better product. 

Posted on

Bringing Agile to the Non-Tech Employee

Even though Agile (and other methodologies like Kanban and Scrum that fall under the Agile umbrella) were developed for the IT industry, other departments have found success implementing the core ideas. It does require some tweaking and getting non-IT staff to buy into the process, but Agile is no longer only the tech department's sole property. First, we will look at the core concepts of an Agile methodology and how to get non-tech employees to adopt the methodology.

Agile’s Working Definition

When a team leader embarks on researching how to implement Agile, they’ll come across several opinion pieces proclaiming that very few understand Agile. These are enough to put even the most even-keeled off when looking to incorporate a non-tech team within the Agile bubble. However, when one looks at Agile’s core concepts, it's easy to see why others think the future is bright.

Posted on

My Design Thinking Experience

Hello, people!

Do you know about design thinking? If your answer is no, you should at least Google and learn about this approach to development. In this article, I want to share my experience with it and my ideas about it.

Posted on

Establishing an Open-Source Program Office

Learn more about establishing an open-source program office.

It feels like we don’t have a strong understanding of open source itself. Some scars have come from working with open source in an environment filled with proprietary software. When the words “open” and “source” were brought together, there was a visceral reaction. People were skeptical of it. Some even despised it.

There’s no one-size-fits-all way to bring open source into your ecosystem. But it does require a strong champion. That’s why Lee Calcote (@lcalcote) advocates for creating a specific office.

Posted on

Introverts at Work: 4 Reasons Agile Is an Introvert’s Dream

Who says introverts at work can't be agile?

While the main benefits of Agile are higher efficiency and reduced waste of time and resources, shorter delivery time, and more flexibility across the board, there is also one other aspect that requires recognition: It's the impact that the ability to shorten and flex the development process has on human interactions within the organization.

You may also like: Why Social Situations Exhaust Introverts: A Programmer's Tale

Because Agile makes it possible for teams to rely on visual communication and tracking more than on in-person data presentation and direct engagement in face-to-face communication, all team members can easily stay informed and engaged in the work, no matter each individual's comfort level with in-person interaction.

Posted on

This TED Talk Will Singlehandedly Change Your Career

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she teaches and studies what the above TED Talk is all about – how we can all overcome our innately human fear of vulnerability so that we can truly lead our best lives.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with DZone, since it’s obviously not overtly tech related. But it just so happens that tech companies from all over the world pay Dr. Brown a whole lot of money to advise them on building cultures where innovation can thrive.