Climbing the Dreyfus ladder of agile practices
Add to calendarAgile coaches often need to distinguish when people “do” an agile practice versus “really understand” that practice. This workshop will help coaches develop a tool, mapping agile practices, or more specifically, behaviours people exhibit when using an agile practice, to a learning model. The learning model of choice for this workshop is the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition. We will also discuss how to apply this tool to better communicate and set goals with teams “going agile”.
An introduction (10 minutes)
The first part of this workshop will focus on introducing how people learn, and highlight a list of different learning models. I will present the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition, using a real-life example everyone should be able to relate to explain each stage.
Brainstorming behaviours (20 minutes)
I will then break the audience up into small groups, and equipped with a list of practices, ask them to write down specific behaviours that they see focused around each practice.
Mapping (20 minutes)
Each group will then be asked to try to classify their set of behaviours to the model. Depending on the room set up, I hope to be lightweight and visual with this, using sticky notes posted on either flipcharts, a wall or several whiteboards. Alternatively, depending on the room available, or the group size, I will ask people to group them into areas near them.
Walkthrough (15 minutes)
The groups will spend some time looking at the classifications that other groups put together to get a sense of other sets of behaviours and mappings.
Discussion (15 minutes)
Finally we’ll discuss how people might apply this to their own situations, and how they would iterative (refine/update) the lists everyone just created, capturing the detail on a flipchart or whiteboard.
Conclusion (10 minutes)
We’ll conclude with a quick recap of what we did, what we learned, and a simple mantra to help people remember the process we just applied so participants can hopefully use this in their world.
Other notes
- I’ve considering running this session for only 45 minutes but could be quite tight.
- I’m also aiming for a group between 15-25 people ideally, though more might be more interesting.
- The main outcome for this session is a coaching tool for better communicating with coachees the different levels of mastery for a particular agile practice.
- Understand the process used to map behaviours onto a learning model
- Become aware of different learning models (with Dreyfus as the main focus)
- Understand how to use the model with coachees to set goals and evaluate progress
