Practice, Practice, Practice

This is Part 2

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Growing up I was in the marching band, in the drum section, which to me was the coolest section. As I was learning to play the drums we practiced rudiments - single stroke rolls, multiple bounce rolls, flams, paradiddles, ... Rudiments are the components that allow drummers to play various techniques creating the wide variety of sounds you hear in music. When first learning it took extra time to figure out how to control the sticks, how to keep the right beat, how to play the right sequences. We practiced slow at first then began to increase in speed. We practiced over and over and over again.

The same was true for the times I played sports. For example, in tennis we had a ball machine that would launch one ball after another to the same spot, where I would have to hit cross court forehands over and over and over again. This style of practice allowed me to improve my skills and become a better drummer and tennis player.

In the lean and agile worlds there are a couple of key aspects that allow us to practice.
The first is obvious, we can take a class or attend a conference where we can interact with knowledgeable instructors to practice running a standup meeting,  practice planning poker, or practice creating a backlog of user stories. We can also run our own experiential workshops or lunch 'n' learns that allow us to learn new skills in a safe environment. All so we can practice, practice, practice.

The second aspect of practice in our world is through frequent deliveries of working software. If we're using iterations, every week or two we're planning, running daily standups, conducting demos at the end of our iteration, and holding a retrospective to inspect and adapt. Since we're doing our activities over and over we have an opportunity to quickly improve and become more efficient as individuals and as teams.

Tuckman's team development model - forming, storming, norming, performing - shows how teams go through the various stages of team development to reach high-performance. In the lean and agile world we get incremental opportunities to climb through these stages every time we go through our iterations. Every time we deliver, we practice the various activities and we get better with each delivery incrementally becoming high performers.

In my agile coaching experience, teams tend to move through Tuckman's stages each iteration, quickly becoming proficient and effective after just a few iterations. Our advantage? Practice, practice, practice.