Lena Pejgan invited me to join her in her pair blogging series (see her first post for some background). We quickly decided to write about starting a new job in the pandemic – which we both did! Lena is a manager, so she has perspective for hiring new people during these strange new times. I’m […]
Read MoreDistributed Teams
The Need for Feedback
It’s been a big year of change for me. My husband and I moved our three donkeys, three cats and two dogs 1900 miles, from Colorado to Vermont. I started a new job as testing advocate for mabl at the beginning of August, and executed our long-planned move three weeks later. We love our new […]
Read MoreRetrospectives for large teams with many sub-teams
My team has 40+ members, distributed into seven or so “pods” and across several locations. It’s a challenge to communicate information among the multiple pods. In addition, we often face obstacles that cross over multiple pods. We usually have a “cross-pod retrospective” once a month. It’s typically in the “Happy/Puzzler/Sad” format. We collect items in […]
Read MoreWhat I Learned Pairing on a Workshop
I pair on all my conference sessions. It’s more fun, participants get a better learning opportunity, and if my pairs are less experienced at presenting, they get to practice their skills. Big bonus: I learn a lot too! I’ve paired with quite a few awesome people. Janet Gregory and I have, of course, been pairing […]
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