Agile Training Redux

Or, how to measure the success of training and trainers?

I was struck by Simon Powers’ newsletter entitled—

DC59: How Training from the Back of the Room (TBR) changed the way agility was taught

And pioneered a shift across the whole of learning and development

It gave a lovely historical review of TBR, its value, impact, and evolution as a de facto training standard in the agile community (and beyond).

I recall it unfolding exactly as Simon describes and taking the Agile training world by storm, particularly the iCAgile and Scrum Alliance CST worlds.

In 2016, I attended a TFTBOTR class myself. While I appreciate the approach, I never went “all in” like my colleagues did. Instead, I used the learning to augment my training approaches.

But

Simon’s article made me reflect on the history of agile training and some of my reactions to what was emerging. So, I want to shift the discussion.

In 2018, I wrote this piece about the defamation of PowerPoint in the agile training community. I hold to this same position today.

And in 2019, I wrote this piece again, focusing on training approaches in our community. I was looking for a more balanced approach. A strategy that focused more on the instructor sharing their direct experience as the prime directive.

What’s Next

But here’s the real point I wanted to get to…

Suppose the TFTBOTR and other approaches were so great during the past decade. Why are we experiencing so many layoffs, reorganizations, challenges with agile transformation, and sad stories right now?

I think the training, all of it, wasn’t as great as the instructors thought it was, and the many resulting certifications didn’t prepare people for the real world.

A new metric for training success

We need a new metric to define what a successful training class looks like. It’s not—

• The class was excellent,

• Or, wow, TFTBOTR changed the learning dynamics,

• Or, did we play a lot of games,

• Or did the students leave incredibly excited,

• Or, did the instructor receive all 10s from their student evaluations,

• Or…

None of those matters. I’m thinking of a measure along the lines of—

Did the training better position the students to survive and thrive in the real-world business communities where they would be operating with their new skills? Both now and into the future?

If this is the metric, then much of the agile training hoopla, including TFTBOTR, might not have fared as well as we thought it did.

And most importantly, do we need to look in the mirror and change some things in our Agile trainers and training strategies? I wonder…

Stay agile, my friends,

Bob,

By the way, this post does not undermine any of Simon's points regarding TFTBOTR. It was a fundamental shift in our training approaches. It’s more focused on the big picture of how we measure the success of our training impact in the future.

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