On Learning

Some time ago, just few days before I started my new job at Ambientia, I was talking at JCN 2012 conference in Helsinki about BDD. The title of the talk was 'Introducing BDD'.

Finally I realized something I hadn't thought of before, at least to this extent. That is, the topic of learning.

While hiking, it is especially important to stop and reflect where we are - trying to locate ourselves on the map.
A group of hikers learning the basics of orienteering.

Learning has been on top of my mind lately. Partly because of the supervision studies, in which I learn a great deal about myself, partly because of me lecturing/guiding/facilitating at the university of Turku and partly because, I just love to learn. Or like my little princess puts it 'Daddy, may I learn that?'

A little quiz for a start. What is one common factor in TDD, BDD, ET, Sprint Demo, Sprint Retro in agile teams? Given the topic of 'Learning', it might be self-evident. Yes, we tend to learn while performing those practices. That was simple - and for me the more interesting question is, how do I feel that TDD and ET are the same? What is the characteristic that makes me think they correlate?

Where do we learn? (The following excerpts have a lot of conceptual ambiquity, please bear with me. I'll get to the point soon!)

• TDD - one part where we learn is when we turn a failing test into a passing one, we learn - in reflection - that the system did something as expected
• BDD - if we're lucky the process we're working with has many feedback loops incorporated into it. We learn - in reflection - whether we're building a feature fulfilling a business need.
• ET - We learn - in reflection - things about our system, how it behaves and how the system could be used and improved.
• Demo - We learn - in reflection - whether implemented features are what the business/customer needs
• Retro - We learn - in reflection - as a group. Of our behavior, of our team. Of us.

That is, the common idea in all aforementioned practices is that we take our time for reflection. We reflect on what happened (observations), how it made us feel (feelings), what we think of it (ideas), what are our hopes regarding it (hope) and what we'll do about it (action).

Often I go through all these phases so fast, that I don't even notice they are different phases. And I'm working on that.

I see that happening even when I'm test-driving my code. I often run really small experiments - fail in it - turn back and try another route. And while reverting my changes, I reflect on what happened. And I learn when exploring the system while working on it. Taking steps I hadn't though of. And when I see something strange, I stop to wonder.

In my talk, I did not describe a process of BDD. I had a story of one learning organisation.

And THAT makes me wonder.

If learning happens in reflection - what could I do to help me learn more efficiently? And more importantly - what do I need to learn to make a whole organisation learn?