Learn how to start leveraging agile learning in your organization.
The word “agile” has been all the rage, dominating discussions among DevOps teams, project managers, and small business executives. Given its success in a range of areas, learning and development professionals often wonder how to implement agile learning principles to make their programs more efficient and effective.
Learning is pivotal in the modern, tech-driven business landscape. A Gartner study reveals that 33% of the skills in an average job posting in 2019 won’t be needed by 2024.[1] However, facilitating effective, time-sensitive learning is difficult using traditional, reactive, or predictive models. Using this guide, you can learn what agile learning is, how to use it to improve your training outcomes, how to build an agile learning culture, and the tools you can use to implement agile education in your business.
What is agile learning?
Agile learning centers around making learning flexible, responsive, and immediately useful. Some may, understandably, confuse agile learning with learning agility. Learning agility is different in that it focuses less on teaching methods and more on the learner’s ability. Learning agility involves how willing someone is to learn new things and use their knowledge to adapt to evolving circumstances.
Agile learning is adaptable and able to adjust to changing circumstances with minimal friction. To understand this better, consider an example. Suppose a software development team failed to deliver an application on time because they struggled with using available JavaScript libraries to their fullest potential. With traditional, reactive learning, the CIO may then provide training about how to use JQuery, React.js, and other libraries. But what if the next project doesn’t require those libraries’ tools? In that case, the knowledge the students acquire may not be immediately useful. It also may not be effectively reinforced in the minds and practices of the team.
On the other hand, using an agile approach, the CIO could instruct the project manager to sit down with the team before starting the project and figure out the tools it will require together.
Then team members can use just-in-time (JIT) microburst training about how to use the tools in the applicable libraries. JIT microburst training sessions last from two to 25 minutes.[1] Immediately after, the team would practice using what they learned to build an element of the app they’re working on.
In the next Scrum meeting, team members report back about what worked and challenges. The project manager then designs the next JIT microburst based on this feedback.
By approaching learning in this way, the team gets to practice their knowledge immediately, which both reinforces what they learned and underscores its value-add.
For small-to-midsize business (SMB) owners, taking an agile approach makes learning more effective, speeding up the process of filling knowledge gaps. In this way, you can use agile learning design to upskill employees faster while also ensuring they retain more of what they learned.
Businesses have to meet the challenge of developing highly skilled, flexible employees. Using agile principles, you can create a culture of constant, responsive, applicable learning that empowers employees to embrace complex new technologies and business systems.
What businesses should consider agile learning?
Because every business needs to help its team members learn, all companies should consider agile learning. However, it’s particularly useful for SMBs because they often have to heavily leverage technology to gain an advantage in highly competitive environments.
For instance, instead of having sales reps self-manage manually typed-out lists of leads, an SMB may opt for an automated customer relationship management (CRM) system that integrates with a centralized marketing platform. Using these tools, much of the sales team’s decisions around which leads to foster and target are easier, thanks to the software automatically surfacing the highest-quality leads. However, learning how to use these tools requires training.
With agile learning, individual salespeople can learn and use the app within a few hours. They could then build on their learning as they need to leverage other app features.
The same principles apply to the education, finance, technology, manufacturing, and retail sectors. Whenever business productivity hinges on employees learning and applying new skills, agile learning should be on the table.
What are the benefits of agile learning?
Agile learning benefits employees and executives at all levels because it weaves learning into the business fabric instead of simply appending it to regular daily activities. More specifically, agile learning enables:
The immediate application of learned skills
Flexible learning structures that satisfy learners’ needs on an as-needed basis
Faster upskilling for people who need to use new technologies
A culture that makes learning a natural element of your business activities, resulting in a workforce that’s always ready to develop new skills
What are the challenges of agile learning?
Implementing agile learning involves considering a few challenges and then overcoming them using a proactive approach:
Lack of support from leadership. Agile learning may involve teams interspersing learning with daily work. This can be understandably hard for some leaders to accept. To overcome this challenge, it’s best to convey the frequency and duration of learning sessions and explain how they will help, not hinder productivity.
Cultural resistance. Some employees may be used to reactive, predictive, or other learning approaches. Perhaps they’ve been using them since childhood, and agile may feel too disruptive. To circumvent this obstacle, you should emphasize how agile learning is immediately useful and makes their jobs easier.
Lack of technological resources. Given the flexibility agile learning requires, some organizations may not have the software they need to design and deploy learning modules quickly and without interfering with productivity. Getting the tech required early in your implementation life cycle gives your managers time to learn and get used to them.
How to build an agile learning culture
The first step in building an agile learning culture is to move away from a “check the box” or “compliance-driven” training system and towards one that puts learning central to weekly workflows. One way of doing this is by using culture hacks.
Culture hacking is a lot like computer hacking: You target “a single point where culture is vulnerable to deep change.” Then, you change how things are done in that arena.
For example, you can use culture hacking to target team meetings. Instead of wrapping up the meeting with a closing statement by the manager running it, you can have each team member talk about two things they learned. In this way, you help reinforce the team’s learning.
You could also redesign meetings, dividing them into two sections: learning and application. In the first half of the meeting, the team learns something. In the next half, they take out their computers or return to their workstations and apply what they just learned. Then, as a wrap-up activity, everyone gets a chance to reflect on what they learned and how it was useful.
Agile learning tools and technologies
You don’t have to navigate the agile landscape alone; there are tried and testing tools and technologies that have worked for other project and training managers:
Scrum framework involves organizing work into sprints, which are short development cycles. After each sprint, the team delivers a product and reviews what they produced and the development process.
A Kanban board consists of a visual workflow that demonstrates the progress of each task. It also has information about the status of each task, making it useful for managing the development of large, complicated initiatives.
Design thinking centers around developing products using five phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.
Rapid authoring tools are apps that make it possible for the team to create educational content quickly. They tend to leverage templates, quizzes, and multimedia to boost the quality and effectiveness of the learning.
Collaboration tools enable more seamless communication between learners and teachers. They also make it easier for team members in different areas to get the same material and have similar experiences and outcomes.
In addition, it’s also best to use cloud-based resources whenever possible. In this way, your learners can access and reflect on your educational collateral whenever they want. For example, suppose a manufacturing team is learning how to assemble a new component. By giving them access to cloud-based learning material, they can practice at home, during breaks, or on the weekends—if that suits their learning style.
Cloud-based learning also makes it easier for educators to deploy adjustments to learning modules because they can make a single change, and everyone who accesses it can see it right away. Also, assessments, grading, and providing feedback can be more straightforward when you leverage cloud resources because teachers have a central location from which to interact with learners.
Use agile learning to upskill your teams
The tools below make it easier to design and implement learning in a way that meets the immediate needs of your target audience:
Learning management software gives you a central hub to design and deliver learning. You can also use it to track how well training aligns with your desired outcomes.
Online learning. You can use online courses and tutorials to design agile learning. If an online course isn’t agile itself, it’s important to only glean what’s useful, such as exercises, that you can implement into your own learning system.
Collaboration software. Using collaboration software, you remove the boundaries between learners and educators, enabling them to freely ask questions, share work, and provide feedback—using a variety of channels.
Assessment and feedback solutions. Using these, you can get instant feedback from learners about how the training is impacting your objectives. You can also gather feedback about how to improve your teaching system and what to cover in the future.
With this guide in hand, you now know what agile learning looks like, its benefits, challenges to keep an eye out for, and how to foster an agile learning culture in your organization. Your next step is to start investigating some of the aforementioned tech tools you can use to facilitate an agile learning environment.