Have you ever wondered how many hours do you actually work at the office? Excluding lunch breaks and other breaks obviously. Have you ever calculated your productivity level during the day? How many hours are you able to work uninterrupted? If at all possible.

In my last post about teams I claimed there is no universal recipe for breeding a jelled team. A few days ago I came across a great book Peopleware, first published 20 years ago and then updated a few times. The authors explain what it takes for the team to jell. In order to illustrate the team creation process I would like to tell the story that was told in their book. This is a story of The Black Team-a legend in the computing industry who changed the fate of IBM forever.

The value of having jelled teams in the company or working in one is pretty obvious. Such teams are more productive and work more efficiently since they feel comfortable with each other. Can we use some magic trick to create a good team? Not really. For managers it’s usually easier to point out team killing factors rather than give a recipe for a healthy team.

Quite some years ago, after attending a presentation about lean production at Toyota, I decided to buy the book “The Toyota Way”. I had the feeling many of their 14 management principles would be applicable to professional services as well. I started reading the book, but never finished. Last weeks I read several posts about lean software development compared to another Agile working method: SCRUM. Honestly, despite the recent car issues that Toyota is facing, I feel both methods, or even a combination of these two, can help us deliver software in a better way.

Recently, I’ve come cross an HBR article “The Innovator’s DNA”, in which they explain what makes some people innovative and what sets them apart from the rest of us? They also tried to answer the question why some companies are innovative and some are not? Where do the best ideas come from? The article is based on the study carried out by the professors from  Harvard, Insead and BrighamYoung University.

After 6 years they identified 5 secrets of being innovative.The findings are optimistic. The researchers say it’s not an inherent feature but it’s a set of skills that can be learned. According to the article, creativity is close to 80 percent learned and acquired. This means there is hope for almost everybody!

The company life is all about communication be it direct, face-to-face or virtual and remote with colleagues, clients and company partners. Have you ever counted how many meetings you attend in the period of a month or a year? Many people’s work days consist of meetings almost entirely. After all these hours of discussing most of them say “Now I can get back to work and finally focus on my job”.

Do they not treat meetings like part of their work then? What does this sentence imply? Do they indirectly send the message that the time spent in a meeting was simply counter-productive?

We all know that only the “learning organizations” have a bright future ahead. Knowledge is the key predictor of success. So why aren’t we eager to share our knowledge? Why often people working for the same organization don’t cooperate?

Nowadays, with the development of IT industry companies give their employees the variety of tools to make their work more productive and efficient. But it requires a lot of time to adopt them and adapt to new working patterns. Often the managers first have to break down people’s resistance to change  and innovation.

The question is- are all these tools a help or a hindrance? Do they actually stimulate collaboration?

Yesterday I was talking to a researcher of the Amsterdam University. As Goyello we take part in the Symbiosis program and from time to time they measure the progress of all the participants. During the interview we concluded that in many outsourcing projects in general the demand management is the weakest part and the main cause of failure. Nothing new, I stressed the importance before. The main question is probably why this keeps going wrong. I think the answer is simple: Software development is Art! And artists are hard to handle.

Recently, I was reading some bits about Kanban system for Software Engineering. I thought “oh no… another Agile fancy word, which introduces hardly any value”. Well, after a few minutes of reading and thinking I must say one thing. Kanban is an Agile manifesto grasp in set of important principles. I must say, that it changed my way of thinking regarding Agile and how we have implemented it in our company.

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The beginning of a new year is always a great time to start moving your career in a better direction. It’s pretty common that at that time many employees set Workplace and Career New Year’ s Resolutions.

This is also the time for looking back on what you achieved last year, what failures you faced and what lessons you learned. Based on that many of us start planning their career paths all over again.

But can you actually plan it? Does a strict career path limit your perspective? Or maybe it’s just pointless since we are unable to control external factors that affect us?