In Ireland, you hear of the "Second Sight." To the Celtics of Scotland and Ireland, its the sixth sense, the ability to see and perceive, images or knowledge of events, of death to come, either near or distant. My mother has always had an unbelievable ability to call me out of the blue and say "what's going on?" when I am experiencing a crisis. I do this to my own children now. One of my aunts in Ireland, when I asked her about it, said "no, I really haven't seen dead people since I was a child." I'm guessing she was messing with me, but who knows? For building a team, it would be wonderful to know who was going to leave or what the future might hold. If you aren't blessed with second sight, consider an annual run through four possible futures with your team to help them make the shared purpose real and actionable. It's also a great way to prioritize projects and workload capacity.  Here are four possible futures based on two variables: Team Velocity and Team AlignmentQuadrant: Heaven- High Team Velocity and High Team AlignmentQuadrant: Hell- Low Team Velocity and Low Team AlignmentQuadrant: Purgatory- High Team Velocity and Low Team AlignmentQuadrant: Limbo- Low Team Velocity and High Team AlignmentThe Process:Break into small teams (or do together) and describe if you walked into each of these quadrants five years from now, what it would be like in terms of: Employees, Leadership, Teams, Process, Technology, Customers, Suppliers, Etc. Repeat for each of the four scenarios and share the stories together.Return to each quadrant and discuss what would have to happen for you to get from where you are today to that particular future. Again, share the stories. Finally, brainstorm from what you've learned what you really want to have happen this year and for the next four years. Over time break these ideas into projects with owners.

Have you noticed in your learning sessions that learners tend to tell their own stories and sometimes it is hard to stop them? Some trainers think of this as wasting time and yet learners telling their stories is one of the best ways they learn.  Source: Google Self-Driving Car Project How do we insert content inside or within learners’ stories?In the world of learning and training, it is often the case that content is thought of as a body of logical knowledge or factual information. The focus is on production and delivery of knowledge and content. The consequences are programs that are heavy on content dump and bore learners. Stories help learners add meaning to the content and therefore make them useful, relevant, and valuable. The challenge is how to bring the natural and organic part of the content to help learners understand its real-life meaning. Story types to help add natural and real-life meaning to contentThese are three story types that you can use in face-to-face sessions, webinars, or eLearning design.Stories on the "improbables"Why do people tend to be attracted to fascinating stories about personal struggles and achieving success like climbing Mount Everest, winning Jeopardy, playing a game, and others? Why are we engrossed with best practices, turnaround stories, and successes against all odds? One insight I discovered refers to what Ray Williams says about the wandering mind. According to Williams, our minds wander and travel around and sometimes we seem to be sidetracked from our tasks. He contends this juggling is actually our brain’s way of allowing for more space for other things that "distract" us.  Williams notes that "the mind goes on a flight" and looks for "what ifs" and we tend to be attracted to pursue these questions. In this mode, we seek out the "improbables". We wonder why, how, and if we can do them. So we role play in our minds how we can carry them out. Sometimes this seems like daydreaming. However, this might be related and adds value to blue-sky thinking, a term used in business brainstorming.Stories on emergenciesWhen people are in an emergency, their minds are most active. In some cases, they tend to interact more with the source of the news or the eyewitnesses of the emergency. This is opposite to the behavior of immediately wanting to warn family members. This tells us how people behave especially when they have the capability to interact using mobile phones. Liang Gao of Beijing Jiaotong University in China, in a study featured in MIT Technology Review, says:The interaction with the source or witness of an emergency perhaps is an opportunity for our learners to be a "newscaster." As such, they learn by reporting an emergency or a critical incident. Newscasting tasks require learners to be researchers, thinkers, evaluators, and story reporters.  Stories on deep reflectionsHave you seen Interstellar? I am excited about an upcoming event I am attending on April 19, 2016. Caltech.edu will be sponsoring a dinner for Kip Thorne, the scientist who is the consultant to Interstellar. I am curious about his role in the movie and want to learn his insights.At a dinner last year, I had a conversation with another Caltech professor about the ending of Interstellar. The movie is about different dimensions of space that people must pass through as they  travel billions of miles across the galactic horizon. So, I asked the professor, "How did Kip Thorne arrive at a way to communicate with the audience, the concept of multidimensional space?" He said, "It was so simple, such that, people realize it is a day-to-day phenomenon rather than a farfetched idea. That indeed it is happening now and here, rather than far away in space."  That made me think a lot.There are subjects that place learners in a deep state of reflection. Some are stories that ask questions where  answers do not come easily.Examples:How will DNA technology affect what we learn of other people and our relationships?How will voice recognition impact the work you do for customers?Will you buy a Google driverless car?Would you want to insert a risk-free micro-chip in your brain to boost your memory?ConclusionStories help learners go through deeper learning by placing them in specific situations that make their minds wander about the "improbables," make them act as newscasters, and guide them to reflect on deeper-impact questions. Each of these types of stories help learners assimilate your content better.  ReferencesRay Williams. Is Mind Wandering a Good or Bad Thing? Ray Williams Associates. April 11, 2015.Emerging Technology from the arXiv. How Information Flows During Emergencies. MIT Technology Review. January 15, 2014.YouTube/Interstellar Movie. Interstellar Movie - Official Trailer 2. July 31, 2014.Caltech Employees Federal Credit Union. Friends Dinner & Centennial Gala Celebration Sponsored by the Caltech Employees Federal Credit Union Featuring Kip Thorne. April 19, 2016.Wikipedia. Kip Thorne. March 11, 2016. Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

Did you know? According to a 2015 RapidCampaign study promotions influence 28% of consumers to spend more, 27% to buy from retailers they would not normally choose, and 25% to make purchases they would otherwise not have made. Great news, right?

Allison is passionate about providing learners with the knowledge and skills that they need in order to succeed in the world of work. And part of good teaching is quality assessment. Today Allison considers the one of the best ways to manage the assessment process - LMS Gradebook.Improving the quality of assessment in VETThe Australian […]

It doesn’t matter what kind of writer you are, keeping your grammar skills sharp is important. To that end, let’s review the conjunction "as." Conjunctions are simple words with a big role. They provide clarity and link ideas. However, they are also often misused. I see words and sentences linked by weak conjunctions all the time. Weak conjunctions may not be grammatically incorrect, but they create ambiguity and confusion. They are not as effective as a strong conjunction. A popular weak conjunction I see often is the use of "as." Here is an example: "Replace both headlights at the same time, as it is likely that the other headlight will soon burn out too." The use of "as" in this way means a casual effect. It is grammatically correct, but "because" is a stronger conjunction to specify reason and motive. "Replace both headlights at the same time, because it is likely that the other headlight will soon burn out too." A correct use of "as" is to show simultaneity, comparison, and sameness and to introduce a clause. "I will hold the light as you loosen the bracket." "This brand of headlight is as effective as that brand." "I am going to teach you how to do this, just as my daddy taught me." "As you will see, it is quite easy." For information on other weak conjunctions, check out K.M. Weiland’s blog post "Most common Writing Mistakes, Pt. 49: Weak Conjunctions."

"Tweeting during a conference helps me consolidate my thoughts and capture key insights. Facebook helps me share resources. LinkedIn is a useful professional tool. However, it is blogging, such as this post, that is by far my strongest form of learning, as it involves a number of things that are all supported by researched learning theory, and which improve memory and recall: Reflection Generation Elaboration Retrieval Interleaved and varied practice Spaced practice Imagery Archiving" - Donald Clark What do you do to make sense of your learning? As Donald notes, sharing and posting on social media are weaker forms of learning than longer form blogging can be. However, low utility activities like retrieval and archiving can provide the fodder for higher utility sense-making skills such as generation and elaboration. Mastery comes through varied and spaced practice, supported by reflection. Using social media for learning requires an understanding of how each tool or platform can support your own sense-making. For example, I use Twitter for quick generation and broad sharing. I archive with Diigo social bookmarks. I reflect on my social interactions every fortnight with my Friday’s Finds posts. But writing my blog posts forces me to spend some time putting thoughts and ideas together. Over time I have become better at this. Blogs are for longer thoughts while Twitter is where I can feel the pulse of the action and am able to follow the most conversations. Social media are the medium by which we can make work learning, and learning work. As our water coolers become virtual, social relations online will be the glue that connects us in our increasingly distributed work. Every little tweet, blog post, comment, or like online shares our individuality and humanity. These actions help us be known to others in the digital surround. They help us build trust to get things done, be productive, and innovate. However, we cannot benefit from professional social networks unless we engage in them. This requires more than merely mastering the technology. It means being social in our work. Not using social media to connect, contribute, and collaborate is like sitting in a closed office all day. But a word of caution. When you consider how quickly social media platforms can change and how some go from good to evil overnight, it’s best to hedge your bets and own your data. Be flexible, keep your social media in perpetual Beta, and keep on learning. Reading the News - 1940

We immediately fell in love when we heard the name Urupukapuka Island. What a glorious sound! The island in the Bay of Islands in the north of New Zealand in Maori means "the island with many Pukas". The Puka is an authentic tree with large leaves that grows on the islands in the Bay of Island. Urupukapuka Island is an unspoiled oasis of green tranquility. It has no inhabitants, since the Maori left the Islands many years ago. The night before departure to the island we stay at 40 kilometers distance in Whangaruru Bay. The trip to this amazing spot is our first adventure in New Zealand. It is also a first test of our rental car on unpaved terrain. After a nice drive of about an hour, we arrive in no man’s land. With our small tent we are the only inhabitant of the campsite in the bay. With a little imagination you can call the weather of the Dutch type. There is a faint sun and gentle drizzling rain that change turns. The next morning we leave early towards Russell for the boat trip through the Bay of Islands. This trip should end with us landing on the Urupukapuka Island. It is a beautiful trip through the bay dotted with small islands. The nice thing about the trip is the potential encounter with groups of dolphins that live in the bay. They are curious creatures, so it’s almost a guarantee that you will find them with a boat trip. After some detective work of the Captain, we find an enthusiastic group. A great experience! In some periods during the year it is possible to swim with the dolphins. But, now a new generation bay residents just was born and swimming is not allowed. You can spend hours watching the dolphins. They perform like circus artists swimming next to the boat. Yet we have other plans and Urupukapuka Island is waiting for us. We arrive on the island in the afternoon and settle down at the Campsite Urupukapuka Bay in Urupukapuka Bay. The next day our hiking experience will start, so it is time to take a rest. There is not a wide variety of walks on the island, as it is small without any official roads. The only documented walk is the Archaeological Walk. How much archaeology can there be on a desert island? Once there was a Maori tribe owning the Island. According to an old story this tribe sold the Island to the British for 45 dollars. The remains of the Maori tribe are the archaeological part of our walk. These remains are six forts (Pa) and some shelters and storages. They are the proof that agriculture and fishing were the main activities of the Maori tribe. There is a large round trip time of 5 hours that consists of two smaller walking loops of 2.5 hours. We decide to take the whole hike of the island, but in the opposite direction from the set route. Also, we will pass the archaeological highlights and the five main bays of the island. As is common in New Zealand, the weather turned and we have to deal with heavy rain. So we rain cover ourselves and our backpacks well before departure. The tour takes us through some storage areas first to the rugged north of the island. Here we find, just after some breathtaking cliffs, the first fort settlement. This Pa Kainga North is an important natural defense point of Urupukapuka Island. It has an amazing view over the sea and Bay of Islands. "For women and land men die", is a well known inscription at this defense point. The Pa and storage facilities are no more than brick evidence that the Maori actually lived here. After this archaeological excursion we follow our route along the Otago or Indico Bay. A beautiful, deserted bay that  in sunny weather would have had a tropical atmosphere. Now, the beach offers a somewhat desolate sight. Not much further we follow the road to Onera / Paradise Bay where the trail is dead. In the bay there is no sign of life except a couple of moored sailboats, but paradise it is. To get back on the route, we are trying to cut off a piece. That is a challenge in itself, because we continue our track on a slippery mountain path away from the coast. After half an hour we succeed to get back to the marked walk. The center of the island is beautiful and green. Sometimes you feel like you’re in an Irish landscape, with a chance of bumping into a Hobbit Village. We continue our route inland towards Cable Bay. Again we pass some archaeological settlements and Pa’s. Finally we return to Urupukapuka Bay for the return to the mainland. Tires and soaked, but with a great adventure behind us. It was a special introduction to the Bay of Islands and the peace and tranquility of New Zealand. But we also faced the special climate conditions New Zealand has to offer. More information on the walk is available though Department of Conservation (DOC) and 100% Pure New Zealand.

Entrepreneurship is all about risk. Building a startup is a risky exercise. But research has shown that most successful entrepreneurs are masters at analyzing and minimizing/avoiding risk. Just like investors, they view entrepreneurship not as a business of taking risks, but as one of mitigating and minimizing risk. From this perspective, we at StarterSquad developed an approach to de-risk your startup. It’s a way of looking at your startup from an investor’s perspective. It not only focuses on the upside of your enterprise, but builds in security to limit the downside. In this post we’ll summarize the approach, and offer a sheet you can use for yourself. Upside focus: flaws in ROI statistics In most pitches and business plans we see, founders make an estimate of the opportunity, showing the return on investment [ROI] in the course of a few years. That’s fine if all goes well. However, in these pitches it’s extremely rare to see any quantification of the risks. There’s a problem with that. The best way to show this is by using a bit of simple math. Let’s say the opportunity is described in terms of ROI. It usually boils down to an equation like this: ROI = Success / Investment Painting a pretty picture of the size of the success, asking for a relatively modest investment, will surely increase the ROI. But the success depends on the investment, so let’s refine this a bit. A model I’ve seen a few times assumes a linear relation between the investment and the success: Success = Opportunity * Investment You could say that if the ROI is known, the startup is a machine that will turn money into more money at a certain factor. Depending on the total size of the market, and the likely penetration, you can then calculate what amount should be invested, and how much growth should be powered by reinvesting profit. I won’t go into that, because there’s a term missing from the opportunity. This is the risk: the likelihood of things not going according to plan. Let’s replace "Opportunity" with "Opportunity (1 — Risk)". This means that if there’s no risk, we assume Opportunity, and if there is some risk of failure, we negatively correct Opportunity for it. That gives us "Success = Opportunity (1 — Risk) * Investment", which we can rewrite to: where S = Success, O = Opportunity, I = Investment, R = Risk This means that if the risk is higher, we need to repeat the investment more times to reach success. Investors do this by taking stakes in multiple, similar, and competitive startups. As you can see this is a (1 — x) — 1 type relation. A graph will illustrate the problem. The average startup failure risk is above 80%. At this magnitude, the influence of the risk on the investment is already five times larger than the opportunity itself. And this average risk, so the majority of early startups pitching to investors will have even higher risk. So why is nobody quantifying and mitigating risks as their top priority? Let’s change that. The problem remaining is to quantify R. To do this we need to split the risk into categories that we can realistically estimate alone, and then calculate the total risk from that. Let’s start by identifying the sources of risk. Sources of Startup Risk Starting a new business is a risky exercise. As experienced entrepreneurs know, many things can go wrong. In general, four sources of risk can be distinguished when you look at startups: Team: Do you have the right skills & experience on board? What about the entrepreneurial aspirations of the team members? What personality styles do the founders have, and do they mix well? Market: Is there a market for the product? Do you solve a big enough problem? How do you get customers? What about the competition? Is there an unfair advantage that helps you get into the market? Finance: Do you have enough funds to have a runway? What routes to initial cash flow are present? Can you bootstrap the business in any way? Technology: What technological complexity are you facing? Can you re-use existing components? What technology choices do you need to make? Will the technology scale when the business scales? In most startups, different people work on these risk sources. The lack of integration might be considered a risk in itself. Cooperating as marketers and developers will help you to analyze startup risk as an integrated exercise, and set priorities correctly across disciplines. 5 steps in de-risking your Startup Key to the success in our approach is taking the steps as a team. Getting the best result is a joint effort by business people and engineers. To de-risk your startup you need to go through the following five steps: 1. Outlining your idea First, you need to clarify your idea. There are several tools around to do this. In most cases, it starts with the solution. The Value Proposition canvas can be a useful tool for this. This can be extended into a full Business Model canvas. You don’t have to write down your whole startup in a business plan, but you need to have at least a solid understanding of the main components. 2. Identifying risks In the next step you try to identify as many risks as possible, going back and forth through the canvases. You can do this the Customer Development way, by using hypotheses and assumptions. We normally like to focus on risks, since that makes it a bit more pragmatic. 3. Ranking the risks The next exercise is to estimate and rank the risks. You do this using impact and probability occurrence as the dimensions. 4. Risk mitigation strategy Next, you look at risk mitigation. What measures can you take to mitigate the risks? Lean Startup focuses on experiments, but we think mitigation strategies don’t always have to be experiments. 5. Execution You start with the biggest risks and execute your mitigation strategy. In terms of Lean Startup, this would be the experiment that has the highest priority. You focus your efforts here. If you are not able to mitigate this risk, the other risks don’t matter. The Startup Risk Management Sheet We’ve developed a Startup Risk Management Sheet that helps you in the process. You can download it from our website, and use it to de-risk your startup (check the instruction video). You can also join us for a workshop "De-risking Your Startup". Remember, investors don’t like to take risks. The outcomes of the workshop are therefore key in landing investment for your startup. Also, mitigating as much risk as possible, early in the process, proves to be very good for your personal health as an entrepreneur.

Up to this point in my career I have been an office worker. My work life has been about commuting by car to mostly uninspiring office buildings year after year. Although I never had traditional 9 to 5 jobs, the mindset in the companies I have worked for (even the ones I founded myself) was that work is done in an office by employees. In some cases flexibility and opportunities to work from home were offered. But, working in one physical environment with fellow employees was considered to be the norm. This year everything changed as I started my new life as a remote worker at StarterSquad. There was no other choice, since StarterSquad has no employees and no offices. At StarterSquad people work in small, stable teams of freelance designers, developers and growth hackers. Even our administrative operations is working as a distributed team. The work is 100% digital, so as long as we have a good Internet connection we can work from anywhere. People at StarterSquad work from home, during travels around the Globe (this species are called digital nomads) and at co-working spaces. It has been an interesting experiment and experience so far for me coming from a traditional work environment. In this post I want to share some of the things I learned in my first year as a remote worker. Great view from the WeWork Weteringschans co-working space in Amsterdam  Shift your Mindset As with all behavioral change you need some time to adapt and change your routines. In the beginning it was hard for me. Although I worked from home more and more in the past, working primarily from home is a different thing. I felt not connected and sometimes even lost without an office and direct contact with colleagues. Although I got more work done than ever before it didn’t feel very rewarding. After a while I got used to the flexibility and found my new balance. Now at least twice a week I start the day with some fitness or swimming. Then I do my first block of computer work. I break for lunch or do some shopping. Then I start the second block. And after diner I continue to do some work in a third block, since my productivity in the evenings is good (I am not an early bird). I discovered that I need to switch off the notebook at 10pm at the latest to get enough time to clear my mind and sleep well. Also, at least one day a week I work at a co-working space with some face-to-face meetings. This gives me the feeling that I am not a lone ranger, allows me to meet interesting people, and keep my pulse on the Startup scene. More Hours in a Day My experience is that I simply have more time to do my job due to the fact that I have to commute less. Since I live in the countryside I used to travel between 2 and 6 hours per day to the office and client locations. In my various jobs I jumped into my leased car in a shiny suit to go everywhere. Year after year I was driving at least 60,000 kilometers. At an average driving speed of 80 km/hour that is a 750 hours in the car every year. I used to encounter some traffic jams every day, so the 80 km/hour might even be estimated too high. What if I could use those 750 hours for work/earning money. At a rate of 150 euro per hour that brings in over 100K euro per year. But, I could also have used the time for learning, sports or just being with my kids. Now I commute less and do it more efficiently. Many of my meetings are (video) calls via Skype or Google Hangouts. I use public transportation now for most of my trips. A first class train ticket turns the train into a great workplace with WiFi and good coffee. This gives me dramatically more time in a day to do work. But, I also have time now to do sports, help out with my kids school work and serve as a soccer trainer. So the results for me are better productivity and better work-life balance. Culture & Community It is almost a year now that I have worked as a part of StarterSquad. I have come to believe in our model with no office and no employees. We are resource light and able to grow exponentially as we don’t have to worry about office space or purchasing office equipment. Around 70% of my colleagues at StarterSquad I have never met in person. 25% I only met once or twice. The remaining 5% I see more often during the year. I find it inspiring that we have been able to develop a strong culture and sense of community. I have found our keys to success are: strong common goals, frequent pairing sessions, distributing our workload, communicating and sharing (not only work related, but also fun stuff). That combined with one or two Get Togethers per year works for us. The Get Togethers serve as icing on the cake, since we experience some memorable bonding moments. For instance, we had a "Get-Together" in Croatia this year where I met some great new members of our community. We have a strong community of 40+ people now and I am very interested to see how it evolves as we get bigger. At a certain size it might become more difficult to retain this sense of culture and community. But, there are already some ideas on creating multiple tribes consisting of squads of 4 to 7 people. We’ll take on that scaling challenge as it comes.                       StarterSquad Croatia Get-together Improved Transparency One of the things I find very nice about remote work is the improved transparency. In former companies I had colleagues sitting 10 feet apart that didn’t now what the other was working on. In StarterSquad it’s all transparent. In Slack, Trello, Github and Google you can automatically see what others are working on. This makes communication and cooperation so much easier. You simply reach out online to pair or discuss some things around a certain project or client. Also you don’t have to miss out on meetings anymore. When you can’t make something important you can just review the recording. We have our most important meetings and demo’s recorded in Skype or Hangouts. If you are not able to attend a meeting, you can always review the recordings. The nice thing is that you can use fast forward, a functionality I would have loved to have at some of my onsite meetings ;-). Tools & Equipment From what I have said so far you probably already understand that software tools and hardware equipment are critical for remote work. At StarterSquad you must be comfortable with using software tools like Skype, Google Docs & Drive, Slack, Trello, Github and Pipedrive. I can’t imagine my work life without some of these tools. I will cover the software side of things in a next post on our blog. For now, let me go over some of my gear for remote working: ICT equipment: I have invested in my ICT equipment, since this is key to a comfortable life as remote worker. At my home office I have a 21" iMac that is a pleasure to work on. For my digital nomadism I use a 13" Macbook Pro with retina screen. It’s robust yet very portable. Both have the same software and documents available through Dropbox & Google Drive. My iPhone 6 is critical for communication. I even take some of my online meetings on it when I am traveling. Also, when I don’t have WiFi connection the 4G on the mobile works well as an alternative. Headset: for online meetings and calls I have a headset with microphone. This makes the calls a much better experience for me and for the people I meet with. Don’t be too cheap on this purchase or your calls will suffer. Get the good stuff from companies like Sennheiser. Lighting: when you meet using online video it is nice to have good lighting. Good lighting makes a first online video call almost like meeting in person. You can find some tips here. eReader: I have all the business books I want to read on my Sony e-reader. When traveling it is an excellent companion for the time I don’t actually work. Moleskine: although I am very digital, I also like to take pen to paper sometimes. The Moleskine notebooks are excellent for writing when you are ‘on the road’. They allow me to organize my thoughts and capture the essentials of meetings. Power Bank battery charger: I have been in situations with low battery on my iPhone and a one critical call about to take place. To prevent me from connecting my device to power sockets in very strange places, I bought a Power Bank. Now I always have a recharging opportunity in my backpack. Backpack: you might already have a way to carry all this stuff. I invested in an expensive backpack which has become one of my best purchases ever. My SwissGear backpack is just like the Swiss army knife and has a place for everything the remote worker needs. Excellent remote work gear is critical to be effective everywhere What’s Next As 2015 comes to an end I look back on a great first year as a remote worker. I experienced many of the good things described in the book ‘Remote: Office Not Required’. The increased productivity and better work-life balance are key to me, but I also love the way we have been able to create such a fabulous community. Next, I will try a bit more of the digital nomadism and also dive into the digital nomad community. With a family at home it is not always easy to be away, but I love to explore the World every now and then. I think it can add an extra dimension to the life of the remote worker. Next year I want to spend some time in the USA, Austria, Scotland, Italy and Bali. I will start to collect my experiences on the TravelSquad blog. Maybe some other StarterSquad members will join me. Hopefully I will be able to find the right balance of digital nomadism next year. In the meantime I want to keep on improving my remote lifestyle. So, please share your tips with me and I will continue to do the same. Have a Merry ‘onsite’ Christmas and a Happy ‘remote’ New Year! Start working with a remote software development team.

The nature of work is changing as our World get’s more and more complex. We face a shift from individual assignments to team-based activities. This is due to the fact that most tasks and projects nowadays require complex, multidisciplinary skills to be performed. In the digital space take for instance the development of a web application (SaaS) for social recruitment. To get the job done you need at least a UX/UI designer, front-end developer for a chosen technology, back-end developer for a chosen technology, product manager (with subject matter expertise), project management (scrum master), and a growth hacker to prepare for launch & growth. That is six people that you need to assemble into a well vested team that is capable of doing an excellent job. To get this done recruiting and building the team will costs you time (on average 4-6 months) and money. And then in this case you’ll end up with six single-points of failure. If someone drops off or doesn’t perform a major issue arises. With Squads.com we try to tackle these issues entrepreneurs and project owners are facing day by day. We do this by providing ready, stable and well-versed teams of freelance designers and developers. Let me share the most important things we do differently to ensure success in software development. 1. Keeping teams together Teams go through the development stages forming, norming and storming to get to performing (Tuckman, 1965). Every time you assemble a new team it will take quite some time to get them to the ‘performing’ level. In traditional project management we tend to create a new project team for every project. This is how digital agencies, IT companies and consulting firms operate. Every team member is viewed as an individual resource and resources are bundled in a team to do a project. At Squads we do that differently. We prefer stable teams that evolve into high-performance teamsover time. Our teams of 3-7 software professionals stay together for multiple engagements to get to an optimum. We don’t assemble a team for a project, we feed projects through these stable, performing teams. This increases the speed of execution and decreases risk and overhead. In most cases we can get projects started within 2 weeks after getting a project briefing in. Whilst others are still recruiting and on-boarding team members we are already half way through to a first working version of a software product. Stable software teams lead to better performance 2. Skills & competencies mixed High performance teams are defined as a group of people with specific roles and complementary talent & skills. The team is aligned to a common goal with every member playing a distinct role in the success of the team. Our Squads teams evolve out of our community of professionals based upon skills & competencies. When a team recognized that it is lacking a certain skill they start recruiting from the community of pre-screened freelance professionals. New potential team members can start to work in the team for a trial period (normally 1-3 months). When after the trial everyone in the team is positive the new team member gets accepted into the team. This will only happen when there is proof that the new member strengthens the team with his/her skills & competencies. It also occurs that someone is skilled or talented but is not needed as a full-time team member. Niche skills are normally sourced through the ‘hired guns’ mode in the Squads platform. Core teams can hire these ‘guns’ for specific tasks that they find hard to perform. These specialists tend to work for multiple teams. 3. Shared responsibility Research into high performance teams shows that they have a democratic leadership where everyone takes responsibility for both the individual tasks as the overall team performance. Open and clear communication is needed to support effective decision-making. In most of our teams there is no management overhead, although teams are free to appoint a project manager or scrum master in their team. In all projects the team should appoint a ‘guardian’ as the first point of contact to the client. This ‘guardian’ is sometimes managing parts of the project as well, but in most cases project management is a shared responsibility. And if that doesn’t work in a team because it has limited management capabilities, hiring someone to do the job is a feasible alternative. This can be done on a structural basis or in the ‘hired gun’ approach mentioned before. On Squads we make the performance of teams (reputation and performance ratings) visible to the teams and clients to ensure the right pressure on doing things right. 4. Systematic feedback & learning Stable teams are great, because there is mutual trust. This makes the team a good place for feedback and learning. All the teams on Squads have their weekly retros to discuss ongoing issues, but also reflect on the way they work and perform together. The retro is a place to discuss what goes well and what can be improved. Everyone gets the opportunity to share his or her ideas. It is also the place where pairing sessions are planned to work & learn together in pairs on challenging tasks. Besides the retros the pairing sessions also are a great place for feedback & learning. One team member works-out-loud and the other can coach based upon what he/she hears. Teams build these systematic processes of feedback & learning into their way of working. This leads to performance of individuals and the team getting better and better over time.                    Team retro with people from 4 countries together 5. Tooling to support remote working We support remote work at Squads. In our opinion it is the future of (digital) work. Our distributed teams can communicate, collaborate and perform regardless of time and place. This requires some tooling and organization, but once this is in place the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Our teams have access to the best talent Worldwide, regardless of location. Some of our Developers even live the digital nomad life and combine work & travel. As a result of this many of our teams have a good form of diversity in both culture and timezones. This leads to better decision-making and the practical benefit of 24*7 availability of at least one or more team members for clients. Remote work requires more working-out-loud and explicit documentation and sharing of work. Tools like Slack, Skype, Github, Trello and Google Drive make this possible. This has benefits that even work well for the co-located teams we also have on Squads. Work can be easily tracked and handed over. The five points highlighted here are just some best practices we use at Squads. We believe them to have a big impact on team performance and the quality of project delivery. In our day to day operations we see the positive impact of these principles. We hope you’ll experience the same! Do you want to work with a high-performance software team? Check out our teams on Squads.com!