Building a learning culture Patrick Vine

Why? We should know everything already – right? Wrong. What we often hire is some displayable ability to hopefully pick up what we’re doing. Almost always there are holes somewhere which you consider the person to be lacking. But can they learn that easily? That is more what you’re wanting to discover.

Shortage of skilled developers Everyone wants to hire great developers. It is often hard to hire enough great developers. All the companies I’ve worked at have had some degree of frustration at hiring more good people.

Lots of inexperienced developers Experiment -> how many professional devs? How many paid to dev for > 5 years? 10 years? 15? Attributed to Robert Martin at YOW (https://twitter.com/web_goddess/status/80445238253691289) Martin Cronje at Agile NZ 2016 quoted a similar figure.

Vast amounts of knowledge to consume …but practical application is needed to truly understand the nuances.

Experience is valuable Isn’t it? 10 Years experience OR 1 year of experience 10 times Experience does matter.

True learning involves a permanent change in the way you see and act in the world. The accumulation of information isn’t learning. – Benjamin Hardy Via a great presentation by Katlyn Parvin - https://speakerdeck.com/katlyn333/am-i-senior-yet-grow-your-career-by-teaching-your-peers

Experience is not truly valuable unless it is learnt from. True experience involves a permanent change in the way you see and act in the world Experience is not truly valuable unless it is learnt from. Experience should be respected, discussed and challenged in line with the organisation’s values and principles. True experience is most valuable when it can be understood in terms of principles and values that were effective (with a good experience) or were broken (for a bad experience).

How can we harness the true experience in our organisations to speed up learning? This is the question I am grappling with

Hypothesis 1 Teams that value the same things in software will build software more effectively. Values and principles are important as they underpin the reasons for doing what we do. XP values & principles. Organisation, team, individual values and principles. Value confidence, feedback -> drives principles. Why test? Could you not? What are you loosing? How could you gain that some other way?

Example: Confidence Principles: Feedback Simplicity Changeability Ease of understanding Deliberate intent

Hypothesis 2 Teams that know vaguely* where they’re going will be more effective. So that everyone can pull in the same direction * Vaguely is important

If you can’t express the reasoning, then the reasoning is flawed. Hypothesis 3 Any decision we make should be based on a mental model that can be expressed. We need to move from conversations about how to conversations about why. If you can’t express the reasoning, then the reasoning is flawed. Code review – if you review some code and don’t like it but can’t express why – perhaps you’re just being opinionated. It is possible that the same principled and values are being achieved but with another mechanism. Is this really wrong? What is really being violated? If we can understand then we might be able to communicate better.

Key Learning Strategies Focus on understanding values and principles Know where we’re going Know why we’re doing what we’re doing

Things we’ve tried

Opportunities to learn* Code appreciation / Code review sessions “Code kata and Conversation” sessions Code kata sessions Retrospectives Coaching * To focus on understanding values and principles knowing why we’re doing what we’re doing

Code kata and conversations 1 hour a week focused exercise in pairs / small groups close with group conversation to share learning

Opportunities to knowledge share * Code sharing Guilds – UI/UX, Architecture, Security, CD/CI, DB, Data Domain jams Tech blog * To focus on knowing where we’re going Tech blog – how to avoid the information fridge?

Learnings so far Successfully changing the conversation Building true experiences Removing cargo culting Not everything is a teachable moment Not everyone will engage

What next? More! Increased collaborative nature Harness even more of the experience in the room Different tech that helps where we’re going And more of the same!

This talk and these links: https://agilitymatters.wordpress.com Other links It looks like Martin is doing similar things to what we’re attempting to do (after moving to NZ) - https://speakerdeck.com/martincronje/agilenz-towards-mastery-establishing-craftsmanship-culture-in-a-team Something on this topic: https://agilitymatters.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/building-a-learning-culture/ Something on values / principles and confidence: https://agilitymatters.wordpress.com/2016/02/15/coding-with-confidence/ This talk and these links: https://agilitymatters.wordpress.com

Thank you Twitter: patrick_vine Blog: agilitymatters.wordpress.com