Group Dynamics

There are many ways of conducting agile team health checks to visualize areas where there are opportunities for improvement.

Continuous improvement is central to the agile methodology, but it must be guided in order to maximize benefit. Instead of observing "traditional" measurement, which are lagging, Andy proposes focusing on the health and well-being - since they are leading indicators. To identify what can really be measured, and what things would produce the largest impact, the author has done a complete survey of the solutions available to help teams get the most of their improvement efforts.

A look at the elements that compose truly great teams.

What makes teams better and more productive, and more importantly, how do you build a great team? Ozren Colic defines the categories of teams, and points to the connections between individuals as the recipe. This superb article breaks down the prerequisites, and the three most important enablers for teams to really gel. A must read.

The RC social rules help create a friendly, intellectual environment where you can spend your energy on programming.

As an center for educational retreats for anyone who wants to get dramatically better at programming, The Recurse Center has instituted some social rules that they have found to help create a friendly, intellectual environment where you can spend as much of your energy as possible on programming. In this quick guide they describe the 4 social rules that must be followed at all times.

Scrum Inc.'s Team Working Agreement Canvas combines key Scrum elements with a Lean Canvas in order to guide your team towards hyper-productivity.

Team working agreements are a great tool to get new teams productive as soon as possible, and starting on the right foot towards effective team practices. In this article Avi Schneier explains that this tool can also be used to launch many teams at once. It covers the steps for chartering a new team, helping them reflect on their individual and collective values, and identifying the key events and stakeholders of each delivery.

Analyzing the process-product paradox as a way to scale output.

The process-product paradox, outlined by Misrab Faizullah-Khan, states that it is the underlying communication structures in an organization that chiefly determine the product. By taking an organic approach to engineering principles, companies can create an atmosphere where people can simply be themselves. This article takes a mathematical approach to the analysis of scaling.