Share this
‘Learning is king’ for agile software development projects
by Mindi Clews on 17 December 2014
Delivering 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.
Share this
- Agile Development (153)
- Software Development (126)
- Agile (76)
- Scrum (66)
- Application Lifecycle Management (50)
- Capability Development (47)
- Business Analysis (46)
- DevOps (43)
- IT Professional (42)
- Equinox IT News (41)
- Agile Transformation (38)
- IT Consulting (38)
- Knowledge Sharing (36)
- Lean Software Development (35)
- Requirements (35)
- Strategic Planning (35)
- Solution Architecture (34)
- Digital Disruption (32)
- IT Project (31)
- International Leaders (31)
- Digital Transformation (26)
- Project Management (26)
- Cloud (25)
- Azure DevOps (23)
- Coaching (23)
- IT Governance (23)
- System Performance (23)
- Change Management (20)
- Innovation (20)
- MIT Sloan CISR (15)
- Client Briefing Events (13)
- Architecture (12)
- Working from Home (12)
- IT Services (10)
- Data Visualisation (9)
- Kanban (9)
- People (9)
- Business Architecture (8)
- Communities of Practice (8)
- Continuous Integration (7)
- Business Case (4)
- Enterprise Analysis (4)
- Angular UIs (3)
- Business Rules (3)
- Java Development (3)
- Lean Startup (3)
- Satir Change Model (3)
- API (2)
- Automation (2)
- GitHub (2)
- Scaling (2)
- Toggles (2)
- .Net Core (1)
- Diversity (1)
- Security (1)
- Testing (1)
- February 2024 (3)
- January 2024 (1)
- September 2023 (2)
- July 2023 (3)
- August 2022 (4)
- August 2021 (1)
- July 2021 (1)
- June 2021 (1)
- May 2021 (1)
- March 2021 (1)
- February 2021 (2)
- November 2020 (2)
- September 2020 (1)
- July 2020 (1)
- June 2020 (3)
- May 2020 (3)
- April 2020 (2)
- March 2020 (8)
- February 2020 (1)
- November 2019 (1)
- August 2019 (1)
- July 2019 (2)
- June 2019 (2)
- April 2019 (3)
- March 2019 (2)
- February 2019 (1)
- December 2018 (3)
- November 2018 (3)
- October 2018 (3)
- September 2018 (1)
- August 2018 (4)
- July 2018 (5)
- June 2018 (1)
- May 2018 (1)
- April 2018 (5)
- March 2018 (3)
- February 2018 (2)
- January 2018 (2)
- December 2017 (2)
- November 2017 (3)
- October 2017 (4)
- September 2017 (5)
- August 2017 (3)
- July 2017 (3)
- June 2017 (1)
- May 2017 (1)
- March 2017 (1)
- February 2017 (3)
- January 2017 (1)
- November 2016 (1)
- October 2016 (6)
- September 2016 (1)
- August 2016 (5)
- July 2016 (3)
- June 2016 (4)
- May 2016 (7)
- April 2016 (13)
- March 2016 (8)
- February 2016 (8)
- January 2016 (7)
- December 2015 (9)
- November 2015 (12)
- October 2015 (4)
- September 2015 (2)
- August 2015 (3)
- July 2015 (8)
- June 2015 (7)
- April 2015 (2)
- March 2015 (3)
- February 2015 (2)
- December 2014 (4)
- September 2014 (2)
- July 2014 (1)
- June 2014 (2)
- May 2014 (9)
- April 2014 (1)
- March 2014 (2)
- February 2014 (2)
- December 2013 (1)
- November 2013 (2)
- October 2013 (3)
- September 2013 (2)
- August 2013 (6)
- July 2013 (2)
- June 2013 (1)
- May 2013 (4)
- April 2013 (5)
- March 2013 (2)
- February 2013 (2)
- January 2013 (2)
- December 2012 (1)
- November 2012 (1)
- October 2012 (2)
- September 2012 (3)
- August 2012 (3)
- July 2012 (3)
- June 2012 (1)
- May 2012 (1)
- April 2012 (1)
- February 2012 (1)
- December 2011 (4)
- November 2011 (2)
- October 2011 (2)
- September 2011 (4)
- August 2011 (2)
- July 2011 (3)
- June 2011 (4)
- May 2011 (2)
- April 2011 (2)
- March 2011 (3)
- February 2011 (1)
- January 2011 (4)
- December 2010 (2)
- November 2010 (3)
- October 2010 (1)
- September 2010 (1)
- May 2010 (1)
- February 2010 (1)
- July 2009 (1)
- April 2009 (1)
- October 2008 (1)