I was recently invited to contribute an article to the alumni magazine of the Department of informatics (of the university of Zurich). In that article, I talk about challenges of hybrid work and give a few concrete pointers towards tackling them, by involving the team. In einer Arbeitswelt die sich durch die Covid-Pandemie rasant verändert […]
Hybride Arbeit oder alle zurück ins Büro? [German article]
Abraxas, a leader in innovative and secure ICT solutions for Swiss government agencies, recently invited Dr. André Meyer to write an article on how organizations can leverage hybrid work as a market advantage and to better balance focus and teamwork, while at the same time ensuring data privacy and security, especially nowadays with the omnipresent […]
DSI Insights: New Work oder die Balance zwischen Fokusarbeit und Teamwork (German Article)
This German article was written as a collaboration with the Digital Society Initiative of the University of Zurich and first published on Inside IT, later on UZH News. New Work erlaubt mehr Flexibilität beim Organisieren und Strukturieren der eigenen Arbeit. Dies kann zwar zu erhöhter Produktivität führen, aber die Teamarbeit leidet öfters darunter. Wie geht das unter einen […]
Experimenting with Walk Meetings and Creativity-boosting Walks
A couple of years ago, I’ve started experimenting with walk meetings for the first time, and briefly wrote about them in my blog. Little did I know back then that I would suddenly have way more time to walk, and that being outside was the only relatively safe way to talk to people face-to-face, and […]
Enabling Good Work Habits in Software Developers through Reflective Goal-Setting
I am thrilled to announce our most recent paper on how we are helping developers become more productive and enable better work habits through reflective goal-setting. IT was recently accepted to the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering Journal. Co-Authors: André N. Meyer (University of Zurich), Gail C. Murphy (University of British Columbia), Thomas Zimmermann (Microsoft […]
Book: Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering
I am proud to have been given the chance to author three chapters in our new productivity book, which is the result from a thought-provoking and discussion-intensive Dagstuhl Seminar in 2017. It was edited by Caitlin Sadowski and Thomas Zimmermann, and is available for free (OpenAccess). In the book, software engineering researchers review and discuss […]
Today was a Good Day: The Daily Life of Software Developers
I am excited to announce that another paper that I’ve worked on during my second internship at Microsoft Research was just accepted to the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering Journal. Abstract: What is a good workday for a software developer? What is a typical workday? We seek to answer these two questions to learn how […]
Cultivating a Team Mindset about Productivity with a Nudge: A Field Study in Hybrid Development Teams
Publication presented at the Conference for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’2023). Authors: Thomas Fritz, Alexander Lill, André N. Meyer, Gail C. Murphy, Lauren Howe.Access Publication How does your team help you to be productive? – Answering this question can help workers rethink productivity to embrace the idea that their team contributes to their productivity, rather […]
Why we Dislike Meetings, and Why Agendas make them Better
One topic that many software developers in our productivity studies are very vocal about are meetings. For example, in an online survey with 379 developers, 58% described meetings as a waste of time – one of the main reasons for feeling unproductive. In this blogpost, I explore reasons why meetings are so unpopular, especially for […]
Why you need to know your priorities to reach a work-life balance
I am often thinking and talking to other people about how to reach a balance in work-life; a balance that I sometimes reach, but often cannot hold for long. The reason is that I often lose track of what really matters, what brings me forward, and what I enjoy doing. I start to say ‘yes’ […]