What If Learning Code Started In An Agile Environment?

Michael Combest
Sep 2, 2018 · 15 min read

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My motivation in going to see this coding club stems from what I know of dissatisfaction of engineers graduating from college and going into the working world without communication skills for effective collaboration. Strong statement, but it’s true. This tension is too often confirmed to be deniable. I have had conversations with some of the greatest engineers on the planet. They have told me they were underserved by their experience in college. Education-factory-conditioned minds of engineers are omnipresent points of pain in the design process in building design and construction.

It is true that engineers are not taught how to interact with people during the lifespan of a given project. The design process in architecture does not have a name and is extremely painful, with enormous amounts of rework and a sine wave, feast/famine cycling in production, putting stress on work/life balance. Waste and rework result from poor communication and insufficient architectures for design development. And, there are pitifully few humanist leaders in the industry who see the workers as ends and not just means to ends.

Because our school system is a product of an era that came a long time before we knew very much at all about humans as humans, the architects of our school system viewed people as units for the advancement of industry - means to corporate ends. Industries at the time of the creation of the classic school model are not the industries of today. People don’t interact in the same way they did ten years ago, let alone since the first public school was established in Boston in 1635. How much has changed between 1635 and 1835? How about between 1835 and 1935? Now that it’s getting close to being 2035, how much has society changed, and how much has school changed along with it – the methods, not the buildings or the fancy new gadgets? And that first school was boys only.

We are living through the second Great Reformation during the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It was Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press that created a bible anyone could read. There went the power structure of the Catholic church. Democratized data eliminated the power-hold the church had on the Western world. In this second Great Reformation, we all walk around with a device in our pockets that enable and generate collaboration that is changing the social shape of the entire planet. Imagine growing up and only knowing this environment. Imagine being so empowered by always queryable data. Anything you want to know is delivered to your palm and eyes, for free. Everyone now looks at each other and toward traditional society with a protestant’s eye.

Imagine growing up with the ability to find out anything at any time. Now, imagine walking into a standard Progressive-Era construct of a “modern” school. This is a time when anachronisms are all that we see when we look honestly at our public schools.

W. Edwards Deming stood athwart Progressive-Era Expertism yelling, “STOP!” He used to say that one of the key goals in management is to substitute leadership. Instead, schools and businesses frequently organize around people taking initiative. These are competing worldviews. One side promotes a servant mentality, where the other amplifies behaviors that look more like advantage-taking. A neutral look at the inventors of management and also the inventors of the public school model, to be generous, would reveal that those inventors were educated and informed by their era. They had no interest in diversity as we understand it today. The origins of management came together during a time when women and minorities were crowded at the bottom of the workforce, often alongside young children.

What would it look like if we set about to create a new solution for how we educate our children and young adults, if we did a divergent-to-convergent thought experiment that placed the student at the top of the list of stakeholders who needed to be empathized with? How would the structure be different from the one we know so well as what comes to mind when we hear the word classroom? Would all the desks face the same direction? Would there be one teacher per every 30 students? Would there even be a teacher?

Society would look a great deal different if we helped our children understand the social contract and leadership at the earliest age possible.

The current legacy-tech components of a school are: desks, chairs, supplies, teacher, students, and a room to put it all in.

It’s one thing to rail against the current Education power structure, or to act out against authority or bureaucracies. It is quite another thing to try to come up with a constructive alternative. Many people are dissatisfied with the way the Education establishment is serving and educating our children. There is a roiling debate on how to teach and test, whether local or national control is best, whether schools should follow traditional pathways or merge into a charter school model.

Many of these alternatives still fit within the same structures that have been around since the early 1900s. At the end of the debate, a classroom is still a classroom. There is still a teacher with some number of students. The teacher assigns work. Students do the assigned work. The teacher grades the work for accuracy, while also performing a weight of other duties. How long is it allowable for this to go on without a constructive alternative?

There is a constructive alternative. If the goal were to create a school for computer programming that would model what is increasingly viewed as the best architecture - be modeled after the principles in the Agile Manifesto - the result would probably look like the TriValley CoderDojo in Dublin, California.

Because it won’t be possible to tell the whole story of the learning environment in one brief column, here is a list of some of the Facets of the Dublin, California-based TriValley CoderDojo (TriV):

  • During the coding session, seating is arranged by topic and not by coding experience. (Organic Architecture)
  • There are no Teachers serving as the classroom authority delivering instructional monologues. The club itself is managed by one collaborative organizational team. (Flat Organization)
  • The club uses self-paced, self-guided curriculum that students select from. (Self Organization)
  • Students, ages 4 to 19, are not grouped by age. (break down barriers between departments)
  • Mentoring (Leadership) is the architecture – “Ask Three Before Me” policy encourages students to ask peers in collaborative problem solving before seeking mentor assistance. (Neural Network)
  • Mentors provide guided problem solving and suggestions when needed. Children are educated based on their desire to learn. (Self-Organized)
  • TriV’s mode of operation is that of a neural network, rather than beck-and-call, or authoritative impartation. The ultimate achievement for the student is working software and an opportunity to present that software to the group. (Agile Manifesto)
  • The ultimate achievement for parents is seeing their children develop social skills and leadership habits. (W. Edwards Deming - “substitute leadership”)
  • There is no presumed condescension in the club’s facilities use policies. (based on trust)
  • All-age mentors work with all-age presenters to conduct successful presentations. (individuals and interactions over processes and tools)
  • Ideas for club improvements are socialized among attending parents, non-technical volunteers and mentors, and/or youth members according to their desired involvement. Considerations are discussed for perceived benefit and impact on the club members or its operations. This can be done in face-to-face conversations, raised on shared text groups, Google groups, or polling surveys to determine interest, facilitate collaboration, and achieve consensus.
  • Formation and follow through on plans are dependent on the involvement of club members to make it happen. It is implementation by influence, collaboration, and teamwork based on the commitment and bonds of the TriV club community.
  • There is no dominating central authority. Beyond financial, and other legal compliances, operational decisions are approved for testing when membership agrees on an implementation schedule. Self-governance is not overridden by Founding Partner Valerie Freitas or anyone else. Club leaders are servant leaders, and their role is to be facilitators in ideation, initiation, implementation, and resolution of any impediments. Club members look to leadership in cases of differences or ambiguity out of respectful deference and not out of established power. While there exists designated club leaders, members are often willing to also follow the lead of those volunteers most willing to take the initiative and undertake the actual work.
  • The club session is a scaled Agile environment.

The last bullet is the most significant. Rather than using the administrative or bureaucratic organizational structure, TriV has instead created a teaching and learning model based on principles of self-organization. Agile represents the latest evolution of management practices, and it is a product of deeper understanding of human psychology and social sciences. In the list above are general observations; what follows is a juxtaposition of a TriV approach against an Agile value - of which there are four - and each of the twelve Agile principles.

AGILE VALUES AT TRIV:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools – To disassociate the students from the construct that adult input is required for progress to be made, the “Ask Three Before Me” club rule creates an organizational structure that increases collaboration by prioritizing the option of asking peers in the group first before asking an adult or mentor, or over a solo-researcher approach where students might go to Google or other online sources before developing interpersonal relationships with others.

Decision Tree: Peers > Mentors > Google

Working software over comprehensive documentation – Though there is documentation relating to attendance and other administrative items, it appears that the primary measures of success at TriV is working code, as determined by the student, and the satisfaction of the parents that their child is growing as a citizen and human being. Working code is in the eye of the coder. When a student feels they have a success to share, the student is encouraged to present their project to the class alongside all of the other, potentially less or more polished projects. There does not appear to be any grade given for the code being written. Because there is no bureaucracy to serve and staff, the balance of time is spent paying attention to the needs of the children, rather than any paperwork.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation – There is no contract to negotiate, other than the basic agreement to practice and discover coding through a loose curriculum. What is most important is that the behaviors that will result in written code are arranged in a neural network of collaborative co-coders who know they are there to write code and to help others write code.

Responding to change over following a plan – Coding at TriV isn’t exactly self-directed, but the direction a student chooses to follow is self-selected. Because of this, plans for projects are more like vectors for discovery, or avenues for exploration. It is not taken as a failure for a student to change course on a project, or change to a completely different project. As interests and skills blossom, a student is free to find another path. Legacy schools determine the courses and the path of students through the system without any input from the student or parents. The legacy-planned environment cannot handle changes such as a child excelling faster or slower than expected grade norms, the metrics associated with politics, the school funding cycles, and calendar.

PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE AGILE MANIFESTO

We follow these principles:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. – On one hand, the customer is the child. The child is not locked into a standard semester time period, or even assignments. The needs of the child are satisfied just as quickly as the child makes the next step toward refining their project. On the other hand, the parent is the customer who gets to see in real time as their child writes solid code and develops community and leadership skills by working with the group. In both cases, value is realized continuously.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage. – Coders are empowered to make changes in course or project as it suits their needs or enables them to stay engaged. Maintaining interest is foremost for learning and motivation. TriV harnesses change for the student’s continuous development, through the student’s interests. The Agile approach to learning places the student as the most important decision maker, rather than some remote bureaucrat, rather than a faceless program administered and then changed later through a politicized system.

Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale. – A key feature in the dynamic of TriV is the option to present projects to the student and parent group. Again, the software that is written is incidental to the development of the individual into a whole person. In this case, the timescale of the deliverables is tied to the personal want to present. The software, prototype or concept does not have to be completely functional for it to be of sufficient quality for a presenter to want to demonstrate it to the group. Because public speaking and leadership promote the growth of a whole person, delivery through presentation to the class is a prominent option for those who desire that public challenge. The Coder is the client. The Delivery is the presentation.

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project. – Rather than having only administrative people involved, TriV has access to industry leaders and experienced adults who are in the room and ready to give guidance. Children often view older children as being significantly older and more mature than they may actually be. The dynamic of having a significant gap in age or perceived ability creates an architectural framework for mentoring and collaboration that would not occur in a traditional school environment, where a student has to wait for the bandwidth of a teacher to allow for one-on-one attention. At TriV, students have ready access to multiple levels of advice, guidance, and influence, in real time. The only two qualifications for being a mentor relate to an enthusiasm to help children grow in their learning and a willingness by the mentor to continue their own learning alongside them.

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. – The software is a means to the creation of leadership behaviors. The students and other mentors are motivated to lead and to develop empathic bonds with the other students and mentors. The individual software projects are incidental to the macro-project of making, from children, whole people who can code.

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation. – TriV is built on face-to-face communication and seeks solutions to problems via more face-to-face communication. The room is a hive of activity and chatting. It is not out of control, or even all that loud. The fact that the room is filled with children from four years old to late teens, and all are writing a variety of software code projects, points to the total adoption of the collaborative face-to-face methodology, on the part of the student group.

Working software is the primary measure of progress. – Working is in the eye of the coder. When a student is sufficiently satisfied with the progress of her or his software, that software is then presented to the group. The act of presenting plays out in very dynamic social pathways. The presentation event is managed by child-peers and is a perceptible right of passage for the presenters.

Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. – The neural network of continuous software development and human interactions is a continuous and fluid environment. There are projects in all stages of development coexisting in one group. There is no reason to believe the fertility of the interactions would be anything but disrupted by a more defined structure.

Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility. – The technical excellence of TriV is in its Agile outlook toward how the students are to interact with each other. The interactions are paid continuous attention for their technically egalitarian and unbiased execution. The environment is warm and humanist. In this environment, students grow coding, life, and leadership skills that would otherwise be discouraged in a traditional classroom or bureaucratic structure. “Don’t talk in class” is replaced with “we need you to talk in class.” The technical excellence is in the structure and maintenance of the environment. The level of technical excellence in the code is determined by the student.

Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential. – The students are at TriV to write code – as the stated goal. There is a higher social goal of presenting individual software projects to the group at large. There is an even higher social goal of being a mentor to the other students who are also writing code. The structures for hitting these goals are very simply constructed around student interactions and student self-governance. The coders do not answer to any authorities outside their network of peers; administrative compliance and any other metrics have been removed.

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. – The fertility in the room of idea-sharing students comes from a humanist inclination by the leadership of TriV. Having structures that demand collaboration, mutual respect, and cross-functional interests and ages creates pathways where students can solve their own problems and determine their own goals. This architecture is the source for the strength in social and leadership skills that is the most obvious feature of TriV. There are no precocious outbursts, only thoughtful explanations and acts of consideration amongst the students. The students are being taught life-skills, when they believe they are being taught to code. In a normally identifiable office construct, the environment is controlled by profit motive, as defined by the accounting class, the third-party to innovation and governance. TriV plays social interactivity and mastery of social interactivity as the closest thing to coinage, and the counting is left to the individual to assess the value.

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly. – Ideas for improvement are generated organically and can come from any member of the club: child or adult. TriV operates in real time - more as a hive than as a compartmentalized, graduated, and statistically sliced business. This principle speaks to how the social group is employed, or consulted in continuous improvement of systems and processes. The reference to ‘regular intervals’ is an artifact of industry and how it divides time. TriV operates very differently than a mechanistic environment governed and segmented by what could be identified as ‘regular intervals.’ Continuous improvement is not managed, so much as it is experienced and evolved by the group, through the activities and discovery experienced in the evolution of programs and tasks. It is possible to conceive of this architecture as a kind of test-based methodology.

CONCLUSION:

Founding Partner Valerie Freitas and TriValley CoderDojo have created a learning environment that puts its students on an Agile path to understanding their role in product development, which is nearly everyone’s role, once out of school and into professional life and careers. If the future of industry is highly collaborative and built on rapid change, the framework for teaching students must be built to foster worldviews that will flourish in those future creative environments.

It is apparent that at the coding club in Dublin is a group that does not coerce children through fear, but rather leads children to much better social outcomes through considered architectures, ritualization and expectations of social reliance and participation.

Where traditional school structures intentionally measure, categorize and seperate children from the moment they are first in contact with the system, TriV allows children to go in and out of groups, or in and out of the club as serves the interest of the child. Because TriV is an all-volunteer system, there are no financial rewards for increasing the membership or size of the group of attending children. And yet it has been around for five years, and it has been in steady growth. It looks like TriV will be around going forward. What form it takes depends on what help and influence it receives from its mentors.

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