A talk I gave at Agile 25 x 20 about learning, riding motorbikes and agile

1. What learning to ride
motorbikes taught me
about being agile
Emily Webber
@ewebber

2. The intro…
Practice and discipline can lead
to thinking less and being more
agile

3. Photo by RobD *pretty much what I look like on a motorbike

4. What I actually look
like most of the time
Photo by Simon Lane

5. Declarative (explicit)
Facts that can be
consciously recalled.
Things that we
declare or explicitly
stored and retrieved
Non-declarative (implicit)
The ability to recall
facts and concepts,
often referred to as
common knowledge.
Muscle memory and
“auto pilot”
Memory

6. Declarative (explicit)
The name of your first pet
Your partner’s birthday
Your primary school teacher
What you had for breakfast

7. Non-declarative (implicit)
Your name
The difference between a cat
and a dog
Using a phone
How to find 1st gear in a car

8. Declarative (explicit)
Weight
Indicators
Mirrors
Foot gears
Non-declarative (implicit)
Balance
Clutch control
Road awareness
Shoulder observation
My Memory

9. Recalling explicit
memory takes more effort
than implicit memory

10. Illustration by JE Theriot
How do
memories
move from
explicit to
implicit?

11. We learn through experience
(and failing)
Photo by echiner1

12. Kolb’s model of learning
Having an experience
(Concrete
experience)
Trying out what
you’ve learned
(Active Experimentation)
Learning from it
(Abstract
Conceptualisation)
Reflecting on it
(Reflective
observation)

13. Dreyfus model of skill acquisition
Competent Proficient Expert
Advanced
beginner
Novice
Rules Intuition

14. It takes 10,000 hours of practice
to make you an expert of
anything
Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers

15. Kata 型
Photo by Mike Oliveri

16. Toyota Kata
1. Understand what goal we want to
achieve
2. Grasp our Current Condition
3. Set the next challenge on the path
to that goal
4. Run small experiments through the
unknown towards that goal
methodsandtools.com/archive/toyotakata.php

17. I almost passed …

18. How can I stop
forgetting to
switch my
indicators off?

19. Practice makes perfect
We learn by doing
Implicit memory != explicit memory

21. Agile ceremonies help you
practice being agile

22. Being good at them is like
being a black belt in karate

23. Collaborative learning
raises the performance
level of everyone
http://tep.uoregon.edu/resources/librarylinks/articles/benefits.html

24. Practicing regularly and often
as a team will help you
become more expert and
implicitly agile

25. Thanks
This is me:
Emily Webber
emilywebber.co.uk
@ewebber