[teampractices] an article about remote work and another about self-organizing teams

Below are two articles about modern work that I found helpful: A recent article on remote work: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2018/07/16/as-companies-become-more-virtual-4-ways-to-make-it-work/?utm_content=74436390&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin#38d859995c8d A less recent arti

[teampractices] Request for input: how do your teams provide feedback to team members?

Hi, TPG List Recent years have featured a move away from the form of feedback given in the long arc of the annual performance review [1] to more frequent and continuous means. [2] [3] The Team Practices Group has experimented with a couple of methods of conveying feedback in a tighter loop such

[teampractices] HBR article on annual perf evaluations that mentions Agile Manifesto

Interesting long read on why companies are moving away from the traditional annual performance review: https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-performance-management-revolution The TL;DR is that the annual feedback loops are too long to be manageable or meaningful. Thanks Grace _

Re: [teampractices] Article on prioritizing bugs

Thanks, Max and Kevin! +1 to Kevin's idea: "Along with paying down tech debt, I would personally like to see us focus more on fixing what we already have, before moving on to create new shiny (and buggy) features." Also, I think that the article might be using "priority" to also describe "sever

Re: [teampractices] IT projects almost as prone to overruns as the Olympics

; a-terrible-investment/ >> >> >> >> On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 2:25 PM, Grace Gellerman < >> ggeller...@wikimedia.org> wrote: >> >>> Thanks, Joel! >>> >>> For more real world examples see the wikipedia entry for the Planning >>&g

Re: [teampractices] IT projects almost as prone to overruns as the Olympics

Thanks, Joel! For more real world examples see the wikipedia entry for the Planning Fallacy . On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Kevin Smith wrote: > I would also be interested in cost overrun comparisons with other > *international* projects. I me

[teampractices] 2 interesting articles about design

1. ​Charming story about constraints, product requirements, making visible that which would otherwise be invisible, and the role of design: http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160804-why-are-trains- seats-so-hideous?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=twitter 2. Recognizing context and the value of design in

[teampractices] Good article on why we don’t like what we struggle to categorize

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/the-psychology-of-genre.html?mabReward=CTM&action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine&_r=2 Favorite quotes from the article: "This “categorical perception,” as it’s called, is not an innocent process:

[teampractices] Articles on disconnecting from work email/phone when not at work

The French Right to Disconnect: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-french-counterstrike-against-work-e-mail The Zeigarnik Effect: http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2016/05/25/the-neuropsychology-of-working-while-on-vacation-and-how-to-overcome-it/

Re: [teampractices] Keeping track of activity in tasks in phabricator

+1 to the idea of marking tasks you are interested in with tag for your personal dashboard. On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 10:30 AM, Nick Wilson (Quiddity) < nwil...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > I've recently started to use a Herald rule, to send me a single email (but > not subscribe) when a new task is cre

Re: [teampractices] Some recent articles about the benefits and costs of collaboration

a couple more, slack-specific: >> >> https://blog.agilebits.com/2016/04/19/curing-our-slack-addiction/ >> >> http://qz.com/632016/why-im-breaking-up-with-slack/ >> >> >> >> On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 12:41 PM, Grace Gellerman < >> ggeller

[teampractices] Some recent articles about the benefits and costs of collaboration

A spectrum of opinions on the benefits and costs of modern workplace collaboration: https://hbr.org/2016/01/collaborative-overload?utm_campaign=harvardbiz&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion-making-employees-collaborate-has-gone-too-far-col

Re: [teampractices] Interesting logistical experiment in London Underground

in complicated systems, I don't really know how this helps or >> adds to the conversation other than being pretty neat, but I recently heard >> this was also a thing: >> >> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/412632/first-rule-of-ant-traffic-no-overtaking/ >> >&g

[teampractices] Interesting logistical experiment in London Underground

An experiment in the London Underground yielded a similarly counterintuitive result to the Kanban tenet that we finish more by working on less at any given time. The Transport for London was able to substantially increase throughput of passengers exiting the subway by converting the walking lane o

Re: [teampractices] Long Read on "self-organization" at Zappos

t; system for self-organization' - it's an organizational system that tries to >>>> apply agile principles at an organizational and management scale. >>>> Interesting stuff - Zappos is probably the most well known org that uses >>>> Holocracy. Read more

[teampractices] Interesting read on Open Source

http://ben.balter.com/2015/11/23/why-open-source/ ___ teampractices mailing list teampractices@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/teampractices

[teampractices] Long Read on "self-organization" at Zappos

I think that groups self-organize rather than individuals, but there's some truth is stranger than fiction material in here: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122965/can-billion-dollar-corporation-zappos-be-self-organized ___ teampractices mailing list

[teampractices] Interesting post by lead of Twitter's Eng Effectiveness group

http://www.gigamonkeys.com/flowers/ ___ teampractices mailing list teampractices@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/teampractices

[teampractices] Interesting article on over-communication

I thought that there were plenty of good ideas in this article from the Asana founders, so sharing here in the event that you might think so, too: https://blog.asana.com/2015/07/workstyle-communication-internal-memo-from-our-founders/ ___ teampractices m

Re: [teampractices] Make a tag for quarterly goals?

Greg has already archived the Roadmap project. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Kevin Smith wrote: > In case anyone missed it, Greg has proposed dropping the #Roadmap project. > > He also proposed creating a new project for each quarter which would > contain all the department/team goals for tha

Re: [teampractices] Kanban section

Thanks, S! I changed the "Research team" to "Analytics Engineering team." On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 4:42 PM, S Page wrote: > After today's tech talk I added a section > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Project_management#Kanban > > Rather than a lot of verbiage that gets out of date, I

Re: [teampractices] MVP or MMP?

+1 to what Max said. MVP is an industry standard. On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 9:23 AM, Max Binder wrote: > FWIW, in my (limited) experience, MVP is an industry term widely used, and > I haven't encountered MMP. There is something to be said for unified > industry lingo. > > > On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 a

Re: [teampractices] Offsite meetings

I would check with Rachel Farrand to see if it's an option to book a location for less than a day. Then if there is a substantial agenda, I'd book a pilot offsite for a full day. If the team found it useful, ask when they'd like to meet offsite again and for how long. Craft some options, iterate

Re: [teampractices] More RelEng process documentation

+1 to this being awesome! Only edits that I might suggest are moving this content: "Release Engineering creates, manages, and supports the tools and practices that allow developers to create software easily, manage software safely, and get software to users quickly." into a "What We Do" heading

Re: [teampractices] Guideline for tasks assigned

+1 to actually limiting work in process On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 12:24 AM, Quim Gil wrote: > Can we agree on this basic guideline, at least at a WMF Engineering & > Product level? > > "You should have a task assigned to yourself only when you are prepared to > work on it." > > > https://www.media

[teampractices] Interesting workplace survey article in WSJ

Hi, Team Practices Folks I wanted to share this article about workplace surveys that I found interesting: http://online.wsj.com/articles/more-bosses-use-short-frequent-polls-to-measure-morale-1417550446 Cheers, Grace ___ teampractices mailing list team