Equinox IT Blog

‘Learning is king’ for agile software development projects

The Equinox IT team working on an Agile software development projectDelivering excellent business results in a world of accelerating change requires smart people and teams who adapt and continuously improve. In this world ‘learning’ becomes king. Individuals and teams who/that are the best at ‘learning’ will be the most successful today and into the future.

Last week I facilitated a webinar entitled ‘Learning the hard parts of agile software development’ with three members of Equinox IT’s software development teams – Deane Sloan (Software Development Director), Ben Hughes (Systems Analyst) and Hana Pearson-Coats (Systems Analyst). Our software development teams have achieved excellent results from learning, adopting and applying agile and lean software development approaches.

61% of us learn agile best by doing

By learning I am talking very broadly, certainly much broader than attendance on a formal training course. The 70:20:10 model of learning references how 70 percent of learning occurs doing the work, 20 percent of learning is from others and only 10% of learning is from formal training courses.

During the webinar we polled participants on which approach they found ‘most’ useful to learn how to make agile work in practice. Fairly consistent with the 70:20:10 model our results showed that:

  • 61% of responders selected ‘learning by doing by working on agile projects'
  • 25% selected ‘shared learning from coaches, practitioners, managers and teams’
  • 7% selected ‘thought-leader content (books, blogs, podcasts, videos etc)’
  • 7% selected ‘formal training courses and conferences’

This is also consistent with what we see in the market and with our clients. We have found that learning agile and lean software development has many layers. Attending a one or two-day course or getting a Scrum Certification is important to understand the principles and an overview of practices. But this is really just the top layer of learning. Much harder is the learning required to make agile work in practice, the learning required to embed the changes for the long term, the learning required to engage with the business in a different way, the learning required to persevere in the face of resistance, and the learning required to foster a climate of continuous improvement. This hard learning doesn't occur in a classroom environment, but by experimenting, doing and working with those who have done it before.

Our tips for learning the hard parts of agile software development

During the webinar our team members provided a number of tips for learning the hard parts of agile software development. You can see the full set of advice by watching the Learning the hard parts of agile software development webinar. I summarise a few of the ideas discussed during the webinar here:

  • Context is really important – while the formal training component may only be 10% of the learning journey, it is still very important to learn the terminology, concepts and mindset.
  • Allow time to learn and acknowledge that agile and lean approaches will not be highly productive initially while the team is still learning.
  • Work with people who have successfully used agile and lean approaches before, stick to them, do what they are doing. If something is hard, keep on doing it until you get good at it.
  • Get people new to agile working on small tasks where they can start contributing in an environment where it is safe for them to learn. These team members can then be ratcheted up onto more comprehensive tasks from there.
  • Use facilities, such as Kanban boards, to visualise the flow of work so that the approach the team is following is visible, accessible and can be understood and learned.
  • Do your own research and take an experimental and iterative approach. By doing this you solve your own problems by learning what works and what does not, and can then apply this learning to do more of what works and less of what does not.
  • Be conscious of Lewin’s heuristic ‘behaviour is a function of people and their environment’. Learning can often best be enabled not by changing the people, but by changing the environment (co-location, cross-functional teams, embedding coaches in the team and so on).

For us learning has been fundamental to our successful adoption of agile and lean software development approaches. Even though we now are mature in our use of agile and lean, learning still plays a vital role as we seek to continuously improve and as we bring on new members to the team. In the rapidly changing world that we live in I truly believe that individuals and teams who are the best at learning will be the most successful. If learning is king then we all need to get better at learning and hopefully this post has provided some useful pointers to help you along the way.

Recorded webinar: Learning the hard parts of agile software development

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