An experiment in setting up learning pathways to accelerate a transformation to agile ways of working. A way to form a community of like-minded practitioners to grow in-house knowledge to retain organisational memory

1. The Academy Agile Learning pathways

2. What problem are
we trying to solve?
• While we are spending money slated for
development (a bit)more wisely, it isn’t used as a
pull for the OF
• There are still instances of dysfunctional
behaviour seen in our development spend
• There is no overall plan for the spend
• Specifically for Scrum Master – We don’t have
the right level of support to enable our teams to
flourish within the WoW (Practices, Principles,
Values, Behaviours)

3. • One central place/tool to manage development
• Many Learning pathways with staged development to mastery
• Colleagues able to T-shape themselves
• Not focussed on qualifications, focussed on applied knowledge
• Qualifications can be taken as needed
• Experimentation and Cont. Imp. built into the tool from day 1
This is not just a Scrum
Master Academy, its is
for many learning
pathways

4. Pathway to Mastery
Begin
Understand
Reflect
Follow
Diverge
Master
Roles could have different competency requirements
EG – A scrum master might need to be at Follow level as a basic req on the
Scrum Master path to mastery, and might also need Reflect level on the
coaching pathway
Other
Pathways

5. Capabilities & Behaviours
• I will volunteer to start or develop a learning pathway
• I will be open to learning and development
• I have the drive to master something
• I am capable of self reflection
• I am capable of self discipline
• I have the courage to try new things
• I am willing to apply learning
• I am willing to exit my comfort zone
• I am willing to be flexible about where I put my knowledge into practice
• I have a vision of what I want to achieve
• I have a genuine interest in {Learning Pathway}
• I have the appropriate soft skills to excel in this role
Begin
Discover
Reflect
Follow
Understand
Master

6. What other
things could this
address
• Teams are not stable/mature
• Lack of Continuous Improvement
• Lack of discipline around Scrum/Agile
• Confusion over roles
• Still focussing on outputs not outcomes
• SM as coach
• Lack of servant leadership
• Psychological safety in teams

7. What Next?

8. Lets run an experiment
• Scrum master learning
pathway
• Validate the idea
• Clear up some noise in this
area
• We can develop colleagues
into competent Scrum
Masters to provide the right
level of support to enable our
teams to flourish within the
OF (Practices, Principles,
Values, Behaviours)
• We want to do this properly
• We need candidates and mentors to
be able to book the time spent
properly so we can evaluate costs
going forward
• We are talking in the tens of
thousands

9. Success Criteria
• XX
New people at stage 4 of the Scrum Master learning pathway
•more than 50%
Conversion rate from stage 1 to stage 4
•XX
Cycle times through the path based on engagement criteria
•Teams
•Scrum Masters
•Business
Improvement from a pre-measured baseline on net promoter score for;
•A
•B
•C
•D
Key opportunities identified to improve cycle time
•A
•B
Peer review process of the approach
•Recommendation 1
•Recommendation 2
Periodic reviews of the pathway

10. Finally
•that needs to be imparted to start off with
We expect to swarm
around this pathway and
the learning needed/
knowledge
•Learning pathways.
Once stabilised use an
experiment model to
improve
•We can run an experiment on changing the pathway to include
this
•and then evaluate the experiment to see if it worth adding to
permanently or not based on
•the value of the addition.
EG it may be on the
Architecture pathway,
people think a particular
training is needed to
perform at level 4

11. Questions