Enhance Team Performance with These Engaging and Effective Workshops
Learning is not a destination, it’s a journey. Embrace the process and enjoy the ride, because the more you learn, the more you realize how much there is still left to discover.
Learning is an ongoing journey, and with a rapidly evolving technological landscape, driven in part by the emergence of large language models and AI systems, it’s more crucial than ever to continuously acquire new skills to excel in our careers. Connecting with colleagues and peers is essential for growth and collaboration, but it can be challenging as face-to-face interactions become less frequent. Embracing continuous education in the age of AI not only benefits individuals but also helps teams flourish, adapt to technological advancements, and stay competitive.
As engineering leaders and senior engineers, it’s our responsibility to support the growth and development of our junior colleagues. Organizing workshops can be an engaging and effective way to promote conscious and continuous learning within your team. This article provides suggestions for workshops that can help unlock your team’s potential.
Teaching is one of the best ways to learn new skills and the prep work will integrate and solidify your knowledge. You will gain in breadth and depth. Helping team members learn new skills will not only benefit them but also greatly benefits the teacher.
So how can you help your colleagues progress as engineers? In this article I will give some ideas for workshops you can organise with or for your team members.
Documentation deep-dive
This is one of the simplest workshops. Explore the documentation of your favourite technology.
In our day jobs, we often solve issues by finding specific solutions and then moving on. We often don’t take the time to gain a deeper understanding of the problem we are dealing with.
This workshop lets you get a deeper understanding. MDN has great pages and browser APIs have grown a lot over the past years. Do you know about WebStreams or BigInt? How to create Iterables? It can be fun to try out the examples and see how they can be useful in your own code base. It is ok to go down some rabbit holes and see what you can find. Have you played around with the Web Audio API? Get the creative juices flowing.
Collaborative Coding Katas
There are so many platforms with coding exercises nowadays. Find your favourite one and run some exercises. People can do them on their own, you can organise a little competition, or you can do it together. Have a discussion about the difficulties and what was learned. Find a list of code katas here.
Build an app in a new to you framework/technology
Should you be using a new framework or a new language? Is Bun the new Node.js alternative ready to be used in a project? Make a little example app, benchmark it, and see if the architecture fits. You will learn something, plus if a new technology is good, might get good ideas for future projects.
Prepare a guided workshop
Your team will appreciate it when they see that you put the effort in to create something interesting for them to do.
You could create a repo with small broken applications which the user has to fix. This is a nice example: https://github.com/ratfactor/ziglings
I created a kata that is easy to do in a small group as well. https://github.com/LaurentZuijdwijk/stst-array-kata
Create a workshop, implementing some common API’s from scratch, like filter, forEach and map. Give the workshop a theme around which you structure the exercises. We learn better when we see an actual use case for the work we are doing.
Improve some overlooked aspects of your application
If there is something in an application that your team manages that has been nagging you, but never got enough prioritized, maybe you can spend one or two hours of your regular workshop time to look into it and fix it or at least get a better idea of what a solution would look like.
Leading Successful Workshops
Begin with introductions and set clear goals for the session. Ensure the time block is uninterrupted and encourage participant involvement. Set a goal and time limit, but be flexible if participants are highly engaged. Gather feedback, evaluate effectiveness, and promote a culture of continuous learning.
Don’t do all the talking, as an organiser your role is to facilitate. Let participants share their screen and talk through the exercises. Encourage people to work together and be involved.
Make sure to ask the participants if they enjoyed the session, what they learned and if they have any suggestions for improvements. It is a good idea to ask if there is anyone else who would like to organise a workshop the next time. Let this become part of the culture and grow as a team.
Get management to support you
Obtain management support to ensure the success and longevity of your workshop initiatives. Begin at the team level and expand to wider organisational structures like chapters. Use internal communication channels to raise awareness and encourage participation
In conclusion, workshops can be a powerful tool for enhancing collaboration and productivity within software teams. By creating an environment for knowledge sharing, skill development, and problem-solving, workshops can foster a more cohesive and effective team dynamic. If you have any suggestions for workshops, please add a comment below. We would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you for reading, I hope you found this article interesting and inspiring. If you’ve organized or participated in any effective workshops, feel free to share your experiences and insights in the comments below.
Please support me by following me here on Medium, on Twitter or connecting on LinkedIn.
Explore all articles about our organisation & processes, or read more about the technologies we use. Interested in working at The Stepstone Group? Check out our careers page.
