Bridging the Chasm: From Average to Agile Excellence in Development
Today, I aim to clarify a pressing query that seems to linger persistently in the development ecosystem and has been on my mind for quite some time: “How big is the gap between an average developer and a great Agile Developer?”
Allow me to shed light on this vital question, grounded in both personal reflection and years of experience navigating the Agile sphere.
Let’s dissect this into two parts, but I want to focus on the central aspect that I consider extremely important.
The Engaging Difference: Where Greatness Begins
You know, there’s a fundamental distinction that sets the average and the great developers apart, and it boils down to one crucial aspect - engagement.  🌟
I vividly recall reading a blog post years ago that resonated profoundly with me.
The post began with a line that still echoes in my mind - “If you’re reading this, you’re already in the top 10 percent.”
It reflected the undeniable fact that a minuscule fraction of people are genuinely engaged and passionate about their craft, to a point where they willingly invest time and effort to elevate their skills continuously. These types of people are prepared to try things, fail, and then pick themselves up to try again.
Continuous Journey of Learning and Adaptation
A stellar Agile developer’s insatiable curiosity and zest for learning are a significant hallmark of a stellar Agile developer. Â They embody a mindset where setbacks are perceived as learning curves, a platform to grow, adapt, and excel.
Their journey is characterised by a constant cycle of trial, error, and improvement, transcending technical aspects and encompassing people skills and process management.
They immerse themselves in the intricacies of their daily tasks, fostering an environment of continual growth and enhancement.
The Power of Practice: A Lesson from Martial Artists and Musicians
Drawing a fascinating parallel, I’d like to highlight what martial artists and musicians share in common - the relentless practice. Â In our industry, finding time to practice, innovate and experiment often takes a backseat.
I believe that training classes can serve as an avenue for this much-needed practice, provided they are structured correctly.
However, this element of practice is where the true prowess of training classes shines. Â Not those that have you glued to a PowerPoint presentation but ones that foster a dynamic, engaging, and interactive learning environment, akin to what I strive to cultivate in my Agile and Scrum courses.
I prefer to incorporate elements of flipped learning in my training classes.
Reinventing Training: The Shift Towards Flipped Learning
A revolutionary approach that I ardently endorse is flipped learning, a methodology that respects the diverse learning paces of individuals. Â Â Here’s how I approach it - I supply you with the content for day one well in advance, encouraging you to go through it at your own pace.
It enables learners first to acquaint themselves with the content at their comfortable pace, followed by engaging, collaborative sessions where nuances are explored, questions are answered, and practical exercises are undertaken.
It harnesses the collective energy and diverse perspectives, paving the way for a deeper and richer understanding.
Empowering Individuals: The Essence of Self-Directed Learning
I have encountered companies that take this a notch higher, empowering their employees with a substantial budget to chart their learning trajectories annually. 🚀
These organisations foster a culture of self-directed learning, offering individuals the autonomy and the resources to carve their learning pathways. Â Such an approach aligns with individual preferences and encourages a higher level of engagement and eagerness.
It eradicates the pitfalls of mandated learning, instilling a culture of voluntary participation and heightened focus - the hallmarks of a great agile developer. 🌱
Embark on Your Agile Learning Voyage
I hope this ignites a spark within you to embark on a journey towards Agile excellence, characterised by relentless engagement, focus, and practice.
Let’s redefine what it means to be a developer in this agile era!
I invite you to dive deep into this world of engaged and self-directed learning through my Agile and Scrum courses. 🚀
It’s a space where your passion meets our guidance, where your journey of transforming from an average developer to an agile maestro begins.
So the question is how big is the gap between an average developer and a great agile developer? I think there’s two parts to that, but the main part that I think is really important is, um, I read a blog post years ago and I was sitting reading it, and the first sentence it started with was about this topic, right? What makes great developers? What’s learning? All of these kind of things. And the first sentence was, “If you’re reading this, you’re already in the top 10 percent.” And that was what it said of the first sentence because so few people are really engaged and care about the work that they do, that they’re willing to go invest and investigate and figure out and solve and try stuff and fail and pick themselves up and try again, right?
And this is true regardless of whether we’re talking about our skills with people, with process, right? So those are those agile group of skills or product management or whatever it is. But it also includes the technical, right? In the detail, in the weeds, and how you actually do the work that you do every day that is irrelevant to the system with which we’re working. And I think that is the fundamental difference between somebody who is average at doing their work and somebody who is great at doing the work: the willingness to learn, willingness to adapt, willingness to try things, investing your own time and making yourself better, right?
Um, one of my favourite folk in the world, David Starr, who originally created the APS Applying Professional Scrum class back in the day, had this thing that he always said: “What do martial artists and musicians have in common?” Right? What do martial artists and musicians have in common? And they’re so different that people are usually like, “Well, I don’t know, what do they have in common?” They practice.
When do we get practice? When do we come off actually performing, right, at the concert, making the production code? And when do we get the time to practice? When we get things to try, different things to try, new things? That’s actually, for me, I feel like one of the powers of training classes—not maybe the PowerPoint training classes where you basically fall asleep and your brain dribbles out your ears watching a PowerPoint presentation—but what I try and do is bring in some of the ideas of flipped learning, right? So I provide you with effectively, “Here’s the content I’m going to teach you in day one,” right? Go read it.
If you read it, I don’t need to tell you it; we can then talk about it and practice it in the live session where we are together because everybody reads at a different pace, everybody learns at a different pace. Perhaps you could spend some time reading that content and then we’re going to answer the questions, we’re going to dive into the nuance, we’re going to figure out how that works, we’re going to do some exercises so that we can maybe practice some things. That’s the value of all being together, not in reading some content off of a slide.
So I think that that learning, interest in learning, is what makes it really powerful. And I do have a customer that leverages this, um, and they actually provide their developers, everybody in their company, with a budget of about five thousand Euros a year for training. And you spend it how you like. It’s up to you what training classes you want to book, what you want to learn. Perhaps you just want to go do an NLP class because you aren’t very good at that stuff and you want to understand it better. Perhaps you do some cognitive behavioural therapy classes because that’s what you feel you’re lacking. You can pretty much do anything you want with that budget. I’m sure they might frown if you wanted to go on a paper airplane making class, but the idea is that you, as an individual, know what you don’t know, right? You kind of know what you don’t understand, you know what you need to figure out, and the person best suited to direct the learning that you need is yourself.
It also has the huge benefit that it’s opt-in, right? It’s self-service. So the worst type of learning is mandated and forced learning. People generally don’t pay attention, don’t care as much, and don’t participate. But if they pick it themselves, they’re generally more eager, more engaged. And that’s the difference between the average developer and the great agile developer: engagement, practice, focus. That’s what it is.
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