Learning Cycle

An attempt to identify useful Patterns to build a Learning Organization.

Context

You have a Value Stream with a Value Stream Backlog that defines tentative deliverables and delivery order. In line with agile values you are striving to deliver early and to get into a rhythm of Potential Value Additions while managing production cost.

Problem

The most fundamental human processes build on cadence.

Cycles are often realized in rituals and other visible events of a culture. As a culture matures the rituals and events become more overt and newcomers learn events as their introduction to the culture.

The centerpiece of any value propositions, business model, product, service or process development effort should honor organizational expectations to deliver value regularly and punctually to its external and internal customers, with satisfying content and quality. But this often volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.

Solution

Organize development around recurring, frequent, fixed-length time boxed intervals called Learning Cycles.

The Learning Cycle is both a single time boxed period of value delivery effort (duration) as well as a unit demarcating delivery interval on the calendar (cadence).

The time boxed nature of the Learning Cycle corresponds to the effort behind the granularity of Potential Value Addition delivery, and supports the incremental nature of development.

The recurring nature of the Learning Cycle supports the iterative nature of development, enabling short feedback loops that help reduce rework.

References

• Lean Lexicon — PDCA.
• Lean Lexicon — Lean Product and Process Development.
• Scrum Guide — Sprint.
• ScrumPLoP — Sprint (similar concept, similar text).

Final note: This is a work-in-progress.