SidesWays Blog

Ran across a couple of presentations that are relevant to building team culture, especially for virtual work groups. The first is a keynote by Jim McCarthy. I've been a long-term fan as he wrote a great book. See Pre-Agile Ideas: Jim McCarthy Videos for more. Here is the link to his keynote:

Culture Hacking
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/culture-hacking-singapore

Some interesting quotes (he's very quotable) and take-aways:

Get women involved! Technical teams lack diversity."I'm not a real historian, but I like stories from history""great editorial wall of China""everything you do should be art""team = product"Feeilings are "mad, sad, glad, afraid""any process will work with presence"Book: Flow (P.S.) The other presentation that is full of tips for running virtual teams based on experience at InfoQ itself:

Culture and Happiness in Virtual Teams
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/culture-happiness-virtual-teams

Som…

Great presentation (30 minutes) on why multitasking is poor for productivity and how personal Kanban (and Kanban in general) works.

There is a great short exercise at the beginning of the video that illustrates the cost of context switching.

The Evils of Multi-tasking and How Personal Kanban Can Help You (by Sandy Mamoli)
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/multi-tasking-personal-kanban

Kanban in a nutshell: 1) visualize your work flow, 2) limit your WIP

I'm experimenting with a personal Kanban board made using a 30" x 20" project board:


The Pomodoro Technique is also discussed (http://pomodorotechnique.com/). I'm experimenting with a

Pomodoro App on my iPhone