I'm teaching a tutorial at Usenix LISA called "Work Like a Team: Best Practices for Team Coordination and Collaborations So You Aren't Acting Like a Group of Individuals".
I'm excited about this class because I'm going to demo a lot of the Google Apps tricks I've accumulated over the years, and combine them with stories about successes (and failures) related to bringing teams together to work on projects. I also get to explain a lot of DevOps culture in ways that make sense to non-DevOps shops (mostly stuff I've been advocating for since before "devops" was a thing). A lot of the material will overlap with our new book, The Practice of Cloud System Administration.
Seating is limited. Register now!
Work Like a Team: Best Practices for Team Coordination and Collaborations So You Aren't Acting Like a Group of Individuals
Who should attend:
System administrators and managers that work on a team of 3 or more.
When/Where
Sunday, 9-Nov, 9am-12:30pm at Usenix LISA
Description:
System Administration is a team sport. How can we better collaborate and work as a team? Techniques will include many uses of Google Docs, wikis and other shared document systems, as well as strategies and methods that create a culture of cooperation.
Take back to work:
- Behavior that builds team cohesion
- 3 uses of Google docs you had not previously considered
- How to organize team projects to improve teamwork
- Track projects using Kanban boards.
- How to divide big projects among team members
- Collaborating via the "Tom Sawyer Fence Painting" technique
- How to criticize the work of teammates constructively
- How to get agreement on big plans
Topics include:
- Meetings: How to make them more effective, shorter, and more democratic
- How to create accountability, stop re-visiting past decisions, improve involvement
- Strategy for leaving "fire-fighting" mode, be more "project focused".
- Project Work: Using "design docs" to get consensus on big and small designs before they are committed to code.
- Service Docs: How to document services so any team member can cover for any other.
- Kanban: How to manage work that needs to be done.
- Chatroom effectiveness: How to make everyone feel included, not lose important decisions.
- Playbooks: How to get consistent results across the team, train new-hires, make delegation easier.
- Send more effective email: How to write email that gets read.
Leave a comment