Agility Boosts Skills Development in Companies

Agile methods have enabled companies to enhance their competitiveness by delivering value regularly and quickly adapting to changes. They have also caused significant shifts in team organization, functioning, and dynamics to continue developing their skills.

Before the advent of agile methods, expertise was often concentrated in individuals who mastered their scope, responsibilities, and efficiently accomplished their tasks. This was commonly referred to as a silo organization with specialized teams and vertical skills (or I-shaped skills).

These specialists naturally tend to protect their expertise and know-how out of fear of losing their attractiveness. This creates pressure for management, particularly in managing fluctuations in activities or priorities and in handling skills with team turnover.

Multidisciplinarity, Self-Organization, and Alignment at the Heart of Agile Teams

Adopting agile methods means breaking down silos and forming teams whose first characteristic is multidisciplinarity. The team comprises all the necessary skills to deliver its missions and provide the expected added value.

The second characteristic of the agile team is self-organization. The team shares a common goal and is autonomous in achieving it. This collective commitment encourages teams to collaborate more and support each other to move forward, reinforcing the need for multidisciplinarity. When planning to fulfill its commitment, the team also thinks about maintaining the versatility of its skills.

By forming Agile teams, a team dynamic is established, contributing to the collective's skill development.

Adopting agile methods involves a succession of alignments. In practice, agile ceremonies (stand-ups, retrospectives, PI planning, etc.) promote exchanges and mutual support to overcome obstacles. Supported by self-organization, these exchanges foster the emergence of ideas and the implementation of best practices such as pair programming, mob programming, or hackathons. This helps improve both the quality of what is delivered and the collective's skill level.

This culture of sharing can also be realized through the creation of competence centers, i.e., cross-functional communities that promote mutual support, sharing of experiences, and updates to the literature.

By favoring agile methods, companies transition from a silo organization with I-shaped skills to self-organized, multidisciplinary teams with T-shaped skills. Each person becomes a "generalist expert," meaning they have deep expertise (the vertical bar of the "T") while having knowledge in other areas (the horizontal bar of the "T").

Is This the End of Training?

Just as traditional project management methods have given way to agility, training is also transforming in both format and content. They increasingly revolve around a cycle of observation - experimentation - sharing - reflection.

The role of the trainer is evolving. Trainers become facilitators: instead of delivering lectures in a top-down transmission model, they lead participants to think for themselves, practice, and seek the right solutions through collaborative workshops.

Let's take an example of training with one of the objectives being to explain the following concept: "satisfy the customer by delivering value regularly and adapting to change."

During the observation phase, learners will be put in a situation with a continuous example. Imagine here that they need to create a pen for a new client.

Then individually, each participant will experiment with what this means: they will plan the different stages of their project and translate them onto post-its.

The sharing phase will allow each participant to present their thoughts: different plans are shared. This is followed by a phase of divergence and opposition of ideas:

• Proposal from participant A: "I start by developing the pen's body, then the nib, and finally the cap."
• Proposal from participant B: "I start with the ink-filled nib and ask the client to try it."

The facilitator fuels the reflection by questioning: what is the most valuable part of our product? How can we create our product iteratively and incrementally by involving the client with us?

After experimentation and idea sharing, the final reflection phase will help assimilate the information.

• In proposal A, we deliver the project to the client at the last development stage. Even if the pen meets the specifications, there is a risk that, upon trying it, the client may not like a detail or that their needs have evolved.
• In proposal B, by quickly delivering the ink-filled nib, the client tests the product and can provide early feedback in the project. Writing is potentially the most valuable aspect of the pen.

This new approach promotes learning through experimentation. It also creates conditions to foster group dynamics.

For example, in training sessions for new hires, it can be beneficial to involve the entire team in which the new hires will work to promote group cohesion and collective creation. Sub-group workshops mixing new hires and existing employees can stimulate exchanges and question existing practices. These workshops will allow the co-definition of the team's collaboration modes.

Agile methods thus enable the evolution of training formats in both content and form. Experimentation and involvement are at the heart of new training systems. This approach is well summarized by the phrase, "Tell me, and I forget. Teach me, and I remember. Involve me, and I learn" (an apocryphal quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin).

By placing "individuals and interactions over processes and tools," agility truly serves skill development, continuously fueled by the collective.