Julia Sklar, writing for the Science section of National Geographic explains why I’m feeling so exhausted teaching remotely over video conferencing compared to when I teaching in-person classes. ‘Zoom gloom’ — an unexpected and real side effect of working remote with video.

However, a typical video call impairs these ingrained abilities, and requires sustained and intense attention to words instead. If a person is framed only from the shoulders up, the possibility of viewing hand gestures or other body language is eliminated. If the video quality is poor, any hope of gleaning something from minute facial expressions is dashed.

Multi-person screens magnify this exhausting problem. Gallery view—where all meeting participants appear Brady Bunch-style—challenges the brain’s central vision, forcing it to decode so many people at once that no one comes through meaningfully, not even the speaker.

It’s even possible Zoom fatigue will abate once people learn to navigate the mental tangle video chatting can cause.

From the folks over at InfoQ:

Key Takeaways

— Remote work is suddenly the new normal due to the impact of COVID-19, and many teams are not fully ready for the change

— The spread of agile ideas into other areas of organizations continues—business agility is becoming much more than just a buzzword

— At the practices level, Wardley Mapping is one of the few truly new ideas that have come into this space recently. Invented by Simon Wardley in 2005, they are gaining traction because they are truly a powerful tool for making sense of complexity.

—The depth of impact that computing technology has on society has heightened the focus on ethical behavior and the move towards creating an ethical framework for software development, as well as growing concern in the environmental impact the industry has.

— Diversity and inclusion efforts are moving forward, with a long way still to go

— Practices and approaches that result in more humanistic workplaces, where people can express their whole selves, are recognized as important for attracting and retaining the best people and result in more sustainably profitable organizations

https://www.infoq.com/articles/teams-teamwork-trends-2020/

Interesting they listed “Scaling Frameworks” in the Late Majority bucket. Much of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) 5.0 is also within the Innovators and Early Adopters buckets (such as: #NoProjects, Business Agility, and Enterprise Startups, and some in the Early Majority: Coaching/Mentoring, DevSecOps, etc.

My wish list (#RelentlessImprovement) for SAFe 6:

• Product Managment over Product Ownership

• Deliberate Culture Design

• Liberating Structure (avoiding Zombie Scrum and doubling down on SAFe Principle 10: Organize around value).

For those interested in Team self-selection in SAFe— I recommend Tribal Unity by Em Campbell-Pretty. (1)

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1. This link is an affiliate