Five steps to successful Crucial Conversations in agile teams

Crucial Conversations happen where the stakes are high, opinions vary and emotions run strong. These situations arise all the time in agile development teams and can lead to misunderstandings, inaction or strained relationships. In this post I’ll explain when Crucial Conversations can pop up and give you some tips on how to tackle them.

How Redgate ran it’s first team self-selection process

This post explains in detail exactly how Redgate ran it’s first formal team self-selection process, from initial planning to completion.

Agile for the people

When people talk about why they adopt an agile approach to software development, they talk about the many benefits of delivering working software iteratively. Rarely do I hear people call out the key reason why we should be taking an agile approach; it’s part of the answer to giving people fulfilling and rewarding work.

Level Up 2019 has landed!

On Tuesday 19th March 2019, Redgate held their 2nd annual internal product development conference, Level Up 2019. We, the organisers, aimed to improve the event over last year’s successful first try. But did we succeed?

Video: How to level-up learning & development

Back in October Jeff Foster and I gave a talk at Agile Cambridge 2018 about the drive to improve Learning & Development at Redgate Software.

The Taps Model: A tool to explore cognitive overload

I’ve come up with a tool that my team and I have used to explore the pressure exerted on leaders by their many responsibilities, important tasks and interests. We call it The Taps Model and in this post I explain what it is and how to use it.

Tackling issues with the magic of Theory Y

How we tackled issues in our interview scheduling process with Theory Y and a self-organising team.

Leaders, take care of yourselves

Leadership roles can be tough. Whether you are principle engineer on a piece of work, leading a development team, taking responsibility for a functional area or heading-up an organisation, you are more often than not going to find yourself in challenging circumstances.