Work Like a Team: Best Practices for Team Coordination and Collaborations So You Aren't Acting Like a Group of Individuals

Half Day Morning
(9:00 am-12:30 pm)

Cedar Room AB

LISA14: Culture
S5
Thomas A. Limoncelli, Stack Exchange, Inc.
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.

Who should attend: 

System administrators and managers that work on a team of 3 or more.

Take back to work: 
  • Understanding the different roles people play within a team.
  • 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.


(NOTE: This class is a reboot of last year’s “Advanced Time Management: Team Efficiency”)

Presentation Type: 
Training