Tutorial: Work Like a Team, not a group of individuals

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.

Register today for Usenix LISA 2014!