For the past year every time I give my “Learning Best Approaches for Your Brain Talk”, I’ve promised there would be an article on InfoQ. Well I kept to much work in progress and this week I took care of that problem and we’re live: The Science of Learning: Best Approaches for Your Brain
Learning Article Finally Finished
Thanks to XPToronto, Agile Quebec and an Apology
In the past two days I’ve presented “Learning Best Approaches for Your Brain” to two audiences. First in Toronto for XPToronto and then Quebec City for AgileQuebec. We got fair sized audiences for each and both groups seemed to have a lot of fun. Given my lack of French I’m truly amazed about how engaged the Quebec audience was – neuroscience doesn’t transcend language barriers easily.
I would to thank the organizers of XPToronto (Lawrence Ludlow, Michael Sahota, and anyone else I missed) you created a great evening. I would especially like to thank Lawrence for picking me up from the airport and bringing me into Intelliware for the day.
I would like to thank Karl Metivier for remembering me from Agile2009, inviting me to Quebec City and driving to pick me up. I would to thank Louis-Phillippe Carignan, Alex and George (sorry I didn’t get last names), for organizing Agile Quebec and growing it, to its current size.
I was asked for my current slides, even with the notes they’re not very helpful. Nonetheless here they are: Learning Best Approaches for Your Brain.
Finally after the presentation I was made aware that I hurt (emotionally) one of my attendees. During my survey he said that he “wanted to learn about Agile”, I wanted to say that this presentation wouldn’t help, but that isn’t what he understood. He felt attacked. Later on I made use of his example again, I can’t remember what I said. He felt attacked again. I apologized in person and he said he didn’t buy it. I accept that. This is my public apology. I pride myself on being a ‘human focused’ Agile coach and obviously didn’t live up to my own standards. For that I’m truly sorry.
Speaking in Toronto and Quebec City
I will speaking at XPToronto on Tuesday May 18th at 7pm and Quebec City on the following evening at 6pm. Hopefully I can visit Montreal and Waterloo another time.
Learning Best Approaches for Your Brain
Do you wonder why people don’t understand the idea you’re trying to get across in a meeting? Are you mentoring another developer and struggling to understand why the still don’t get it? Do you run training courses and wonder why the attendees only learn 10% of the material. All of us are teachers whether as informal mentors, coaches, trainers or parents. Yet only professional educators receive training in this area.
Only Twenty years ago most people in the world of neuroscience believed that the connections between the neurons in your brain were fixed by the time you were a teenager (or even younger)[1]. Now we understand that our wiring continues to change (even new neurons can grow) as we grow older. It’s just the rate of change that slows down. This is called Neuroplasticity, the discoveries around it are what make this presentation possible.
To find out more come attend the sessions. Can’t make it? Join me at Agile2010.
Quick Agile Links #4
I’m working with a client who runs a documentation team, so I was delighted to discover HeraTech, a new blog dedicated to applying Agile to Technical Writing.
Preparing for TEDxOttawa this past week, I heard a couple of great talks—Dan Pink on the Surprising Science of Motivation (hint: individual rewards don’t work) and Dan Gilbert on Our Mistaken Expectations (he demonstrates that we’re really bad judges of value).
Henrik Mintzberg revisits Dan’s point to say No More Executive Bonuses!
I love seeing Agile applied in interesting places and seeing how it adapts—so I offer you the Agile Lawyers Association—it seems like a great idea, but the website needs a bit of work.
Michael Sahota visits one of my favorite topics: Joseph Pelrine and “Coaching Self-Organizing Teams,” I wrote about this last year—Coaching Self Organizing Teams and Part II.
Finally, Ilja Preuss gives some great tips on keeping time in a meeting (Agile or otherwise).
Quick Agile Links Week #3
This week I’m leading off with a pair of items on the brain and recovering from challenging cognitive tasks: Cognitive Recovery Time and A Dream Interpretation: Tuneups for the Brain (NY Times, login required). The first suggests that your brain needs time to recover after doing something challenging. The second reinforces the importance of sleep and dreams in integrating ideas and information. What does this mean for TEDx attendees next week? I’m not sure except that we presenters will have to work hard to make our ideas stick. I also think it’s a bad sign for the typical two-three day Agile training course.
Joe Little shares his: Agile Principles—examples: all WIP is bad; bad news doesn’t get better with age. You learn the fastest by small mistakes.
Ilja Preuss says something that’s been on my mind for a while: Index Cards are Tools, too!
Johanna Rothmann tells “How Not to Win Friends and Influence People”, and I’m only disappointed that she didn’t name names.
Finally Abby Fichtner reminds us: Agile Leadership: Methodology Ain’t Enough
I’m Speaking at TEDx Ottawa
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It’s just been announced that I’m speaking at TEDx Ottawa (a mini TED—ideas worth spreading) next weekend on my favourite topic: “Learning Best Approaches for Your Brain.” I’m pretty good company sharing the stage with the founder of Bridgehead, a man who has run across the Sahara and many more great speakers besides. I would invite you to rush out and buy a ticket, but attendance is limited to 100 people, and the tickets sold out a long time ago. On the upside, the entire event will be recorded and available online, so you will be able to see all the talks at a later date. Now I’m off to shrink my presentation from its original 90 minutes to the 15 that TED requires.
Learning Best Approaches for your Brain Slide Deck
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As regular readers of this blog will know I’ve given a talk based on reading’s in Neuroscience, called “Learning Best Approaches for Your Brain” – several times this year (Agile 2009 and Agile Ottawa). After several requests I’m posting the slide deck (pdf) here – but I’m afraid that it will really only be useful to the people who attended the talk. Here’s the promo I’ve been using:
Do you mentor, coach, teach or just help other people? Do you wonder why after your greatest teaching moments people just don’t get it? In recent years neuroscience has started to provide us with a number of insights into what happens when we’re teaching. These insights make it clear that learning is really about building and reinforcing existing neural networks. Instead of providing lots of new ideas out of the blue, we need to understand the learners existing context and work with that. Instead of focusing on mistakes and errors, we need to focus on what good solutions look like.
Top 5 Reasons that traditional approaches to learning and mentoring fail:
- Lead with the Abstract
- Not Grounded in the Listeners experience
- Passive students – i.e. Those just listening and taking notes, aren’t using all of the brain. They retain knowledge but don’t really understand it.
- Rewards don’t work
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
Benefits:
- Students and Mentees will remember
- Learn how to correct mistakes
- Workshop Attendees will stay awake
References:
- The Art of Changing the Brain (Amazon.ca) – James Zull
- Brain Rules (Amazon.ca) – John Medina
- The Brain that Changes Itself (Amazon.ca) – Norman Doidge
- Presentation Zen (Amazon.ca) – Garr Reynolds
I promise that sometime in the next month or so I will publish the paper that Linda and I originally promised (threatened), that will include all of the details missing from slide deck. The only caveat no paper will every be as good or help you learn as much as an interactive, example driven presentation.
Download: Slide Deck (pdf)
Caveat Emptor – if you buy any of the books after clicking on my link I get 4% of the price. In all likelihood that means I might be able to afford a coffee or two.
Why Scrum Works??
In the previous two posts in this series we examined how Scrum provides value to business and why Scrum helps to form high 
performance teams. This post continues the second theme examining the remaining elements of Scrum.
Artifacts
Product Backlog
Basics: The product backlog is a prioritized list of features of everything needed and wanted in the finished product. To minimize waste only the next few iterations worth of stories are provided in any detail. The list is maintained by the product owner.
Values Supported:
- Visible Long Term Goal
Does Scrum Work? Hell Yes!!! Why
This is the second post in a series (thanks Mishkin for hosting the opener) – that discusses: Why does Scrum work? Why do any of the Agile Project Management methodology work?
Final part here.
Teams
At the core of any successful development project is a team. The team can either work together as a group of individuals or as a high performance team. A high performance team is one that has a track record of both delivering high quality software and meets or exceeds their iteration commitments.
Nothing can guarantee the creation of high performance teams. The best you can do is put in place the conditions that will help them form.
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