Scrum Social Technologies

Transforming Training: The Power of Immersive Learning in Scrum

Published on 8 May 2024

Written by Martin Hinshelwood

6 minute read

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The Shift from Traditional to Immersive Learning

In the world of Agile and Scrum, training is not just about passing on knowledge—it’s about creating real, actionable change in organizations. Our approach has evolved significantly, from traditional two-day workshops to a more engaging and practical immersive learning format. This shift is crucial for achieving lasting transformation in organizations.

Why Traditional Training Falls Short

The traditional two-day training format served a purpose pre-pandemic. It was efficient for trainers:

Fly in
Teach for two days
Fly out

But there was a problem. It wasn’t effective for the participants. Imagine a team struggling to deliver value in their organization. A two-day crash course in Scrum might give them a good foundation, but what happens after that?

Retention Issues: Participants tend to remember only about 10% of what they learn in these workshops.
Application Challenges: When they return to their daily work, the pressure is still on, and much of the training fades into the background.
Minimal Impact: Out of a room of 20 participants, each remembers a different 10%—and maybe 2% of that knowledge gets put into practice.

So, what’s the solution? We needed a new approach.

Introducing the Immersive Learning Format

What Is Immersive Learning?

The immersive learning format isn’t just about delivering content; it’s about creating opportunities for participants to apply what they learn directly in their work environments. This new approach breaks down the learning into shorter, more focused sessions. Instead of two full days, we offer:

Eight half-day sessions over an extended period.
Assignments that participants can apply directly within their organization.
Collaborative debriefs to discuss successes, challenges, and roadblocks.

The Benefits of Immersive Learning

This format offers several advantages over the traditional model:

Compounded Learning 📈
- In the traditional format, participants might retain 10% of the training content.
- With immersive learning, they retain 10% of each session, and this knowledge builds over time.
- The result? A compounding effect that leads to deeper understanding and greater practical application.
Hands-On Practice 🛠️
- After each session, participants get assignments to try out in their organization.
- This hands-on experience ensures that learning isn’t just theoretical—it’s directly applicable to their unique challenges.
Continuous Feedback Loop 🔄
- After trying out their assignments, participants return to debrief.
- They share what worked, what didn’t, and receive feedback.
- This feedback loop is key to refining their approach and overcoming challenges.

Real-World Impact: A Personal Example

When I first transitioned to the scrum.org-based training, I was drawn to their philosophy: focus on the underlying theory and principles of Scrum, then build on that with complementary practices. This approach allowed me to collaborate with a community of trainers, refining how we teach and support organizations.

But the two-day format had its limitations. I remember a client who struggled to implement Scrum after a two-day session. Despite their enthusiasm, the knowledge from the class was difficult to retain under the pressure of day-to-day responsibilities. They needed more support to apply what they had learned.

That’s when I began offering immersive learning. Instead of a single, overwhelming session, we spread the content over multiple weeks. The client not only retained more but also started seeing real change in how their teams delivered value. They could focus on small, iterative improvements, much like how we run Sprints in Scrum.

From Two Days to Fifty Weeks: The Evolution of Training Programs

Step-by-Step Transformation

Two-Day Format: Effective for trainers but limited in retention and real-world impact.
Four Half-Day Format: Better retention, but still lacked depth in application.
Eight Half-Day Sessions: Introduced the concept of assignments, compounding knowledge and practical experience.
Mentor Program (8-50 Weeks): A complete transformation, offering extended support, workshops, and tailored guidance.

The Game-Changer for Organizations

Why is this longer, more immersive format a game-changer?

Sustainable Change: Instead of a one-time burst of knowledge, participants receive ongoing support over weeks or months.
Collaborative Problem-Solving: Working with peers, they share insights and solutions, creating a culture of continuous learning.
Cross-Organization Learning: When multiple organizations participate, the cross-pollination of ideas can spark innovation and creativity.

Practical Application: Iteration in Learning

Think of the immersive learning format as an iterative process, similar to how we run Sprints in Scrum:

Learn: Participants engage in a focused session, diving deep into key concepts.
Apply: They take assignments back to their organizations, implementing changes in real-world settings.
Review: In the next session, we discuss their experiences, what worked, and what didn’t.
Improve: With feedback, participants adjust their approach and try again.

This iterative cycle ensures that learning is always tied to action, making it far more effective than traditional methods.

Building a Culture of Continuous Learning

Creating Value Beyond the Classroom

The ultimate goal of any training program should be to deliver real value to the organization. With the immersive format, participants aren’t just passive learners; they’re active contributors to their organization’s success.

Immediate Impact: Assignments are designed to create value right away. For example, one group might implement a new way of managing their daily stand-ups, while another experiments with a different approach to backlog refinement.
Overcoming Roadblocks: When participants face challenges, they bring them back to the group. We explore how others have navigated similar issues, offering diverse perspectives and solutions.
Cross-Functional Insights: Even within a single organization, different teams have unique approaches to problem-solving. Sharing these insights helps break down silos and fosters collaboration.

Success Stories: The Power of Iterative Learning

In one of our recent programs, a participant struggled with gaining stakeholder buy-in for changes they wanted to implement. After discussing their roadblocks in a session, they learned from another participant who had successfully engaged a key decision-maker by framing the change as a small experiment rather than a sweeping transformation. Inspired by this approach, they adapted it, secured buy-in, and saw immediate improvements in team engagement.

This kind of cross-pollination is one of the most powerful aspects of immersive learning. It allows participants to learn not only from their trainers but from each other, accelerating growth and success.

Final Thoughts: Why Immersive Learning Is the Future of Scrum Training

The shift to immersive learning isn’t just about longer training programs—it’s about transforming how we learn and apply Scrum. By focusing on:

Compounding Knowledge
Hands-On Practice
Collaborative Learning

We create a training environment that is more aligned with the core principles of Agile and Scrum. It’s not just about learning the theory; it’s about living it, experimenting with it, and adapting it to meet the unique needs of every organization. If you’re ready to take your Scrum practice to the next level, it’s time to embrace the power of immersive learning. Let’s move beyond the two-day workshops and start creating lasting change, one iteration at a time. 🧠🚀

So in addition to our mentoring and consulting programs, we also provide training. The purpose of training is to teach those underlying theory and principles with actionable practices that people can use. And that’s kind of why I do scrum.org based training, because their philosophy around training is about understanding the core theory and principles. Like, here’s the first principles of what it is we’re trying to achieve. Then building on top of that, here’s the thing, right? So you’re learning the thing, and then what are the additional processes and practices, complimentary processes and practices that can be used on top of that to do more, to get the value out of it that people are expecting to get.

And one of the main reasons I liked scrum.org was because of that story, because of the community of trainers, the people that it gave me access to, to discuss and collaborate on how do we understand these things, how do we communicate these things, how do we enable them to be as effective as possible within organisations. But the two-day training format that was pre-pandemic was really good for the trainer, right? Because you fly in somewhere, you do two days training, and then you fly out. But not so good for the customer, because if you’ve got a bunch of people who are struggling to deliver value in your organisation and you spend two days teaching them scrum, where’s the rest of that story? If they’re still under pressure after that two-day class, then how are they actually able to do anything, to action any of those things?

And time goes by, and then they’ve forgotten most of what it is that they’ve learned. That’s why I think they say only 10% of things you learn in that format actually stick. Right? So you put 20 people through the class, they all remember a different 10% of the course because it’s what matters to them or impacts them. They maybe implement 2% of that, so you get a 2% net gain of knowledge from that two-day class. But if we change that format up, this is why we’ve moved towards the immersive learning format and incorporating it into a bigger mentor program.

Even if that 2% was all that was true, you’re then getting 2% compounded over multiple sessions. Right? So rather than having two full days, let’s say we did eight half days, right? So we’ve got eight half days over a longer period of time. And even if we still got that 2% actionable change, we get 2% and then compound it with another 2% and then compound it with another 2% because there’s a gap in between and there’s an assignment for people to go do inside the organisation. But I believe that that format is a heck of a lot more than remembering just a 10%, because we’re only learning a couple of hours’ worth of stuff. We’re not learning 16 hours’ worth of stuff and then you have to try and remember a percentage of that 16 hours.

We’re remembering from that two hours’ worth of stuff that we’ve researched and talked about and collaborated on to understand that teaching part. And then they have to go and try and apply something in that context within their organisation. And yes, everybody’s going to learn, still going to learn something different. People are all going to retain different things. But even if it was again just learning the 10%, it’s 10% of two hours plus 10% of two hours plus 10% of two hours. So the end percentage for the same learning content is much more powerful, much more effective, like orders of magnitude more effective for organisations.

Because they get the assignment to go try and do things within their organisation during that time, they’ve also provided actionable value for the organisation. So think of it like that iterative process in scrum where we do a sprint and then we deliver usable working product. We’ve got a learning exercise, then at the end of that learning exercise, they go deliver usable working product within the organisation. They just need to figure out what is the use. You know, we give them an assignment, but it can be quite vague, right? We give them lots of different ways to resolve that assignment. They pick something, they try it in the organisation, they’ve made a change. That change either was successful or it wasn’t. It was either able to be implemented or it hit a roadblock.

And then when we come back around, we’re able to debrief that activity that they did, so they then get feedback and engagement, closing that feedback loop. Right? On how, you know, what did you manage to change? How effective was it in your organisation? What roadblocks do you hit? How do you get past those roadblocks? What have other people tried? And even especially when you put a big group through that within your organisation, you even get cross-pollination and cross-learning because one person or one group within the bigger group says, “We weren’t able to do that because this doesn’t work in our organisation.” And the other group is like, “Well, actually, we were able to speak to this person and this person and get this to happen, so we were able to do this, which got us halfway there.”

And that cross-pollination and learning is hugely important to that story, and it works great across organisations as well when you have multiple organisations participating. So that’s moving towards that immersive format. So we kind of started in the two-day format, we then moved into the four half-day format, then into the eight-week immersive format, and now moving into the kind of more mentor program, maybe over eight to 50 weeks of that program, with sessions and workshops and different things going on. I think this is the game changer for organisations because we’re not just giving you the information, we’re collaborating and working with you to help you implement it over a longer period of time.

Mentoring People and Process Discovery and Learning Continuous Learning Value Delivery Agile Philosophy Pragmatic Thinking Agile Transformation Agile Project Management Agile Frameworks

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