Introducing the Apprentice Program
a lightweight framework for self-organized learning
by Bettina Ruggeri and Peter Müller
Does this sound familiar?
When hired agile coaches leave, they take their knowledge with them.
People, who are sent to agile trainings, often seem to have difficulties transferring their newly learned skills to the daily business.
Scrum masters, product owners and developers are in high demand, but the recruiting market is empty and often overprized.
A lot of effort is put into agile transformation, but there is still no common understanding of agile working principles.
There are many experts but there is no overarching exchange.
Our Apprentice Program addresses these and similar observations. But let us start with the basic principles of the program.
Principles
First of all, we would like to introduce to you the basic principles of the Apprentice Program. They serve as our guidelines, our North Star so to say. Our goal is to make future generations carry on the spirit of the program internally and consistently.
WHY
Our highest priority is to establish self-organized learning and working within the organization. This enables us to handle upcoming challenges in an appropriate way and to contribute to a successful future for our company.
The Apprentice Program provides an important base for motivated individuals so that their personalities, product teams plus an agile community in general can continuously grow and spread knowledge throughout the company.
WHAT
The Apprentice Program uses a lightweight framework. Each generation develops their own self-organized learning and solution space, so that they create strategies to deal with uncertainties and changes.
Our Apprentice Program provides the necessary knowledge and skills to get certified by Scrum Alliance with respect to its learning objectives. Thus, the apprentices master a common way of agile collaboration, which they can then spread throughout the company.
HOW
In contrast with regular certification trainings, the program offers to learn content within an apprentice peer group, to apply them in the participants’ Scrum Teams and to reflect with others to support a sustainable application.
1:1 and individual mentorship helps extend the participants’ capabilities and offers reflection of personal development, so that apprentices can strive for their best possible learning achievements.
BENEFITS
The Apprentice Program builds an important foundation for learning and therefore supports the growth of an agile, comprehensive Scrum Community. It allows to continue collaboration, exchange and learning beyond the program.
The Apprentice Program builds bridges between the different business fields and divisions of ProSiebenSat.1, strengthens the loyalty of motivated colleagues and attracts new ones.
Graduates of the Apprentice Program bring their knowledge and skills to the company and to future apprentice generations, for example as new mentors. They support different divisions to create sustainable value for a successful future of ProSiebenSat.1.
Certification through coaching
The Apprentice Program is based on the learning objectives and the certification paths of the Scrum Alliance. In contrast to certification training, our coaching program offers accompanied learning and the opportunity to reflect on your daily work. This enables us to train and promote junior employees in a sustainable way.
At our company certification is taken over by Bettina Ruggeri, who is a certified CTC & Path2CSP-Educator. Peter Müller and Sven Schnee support her as agile coaches. With this concept, we make use of our diverse experiences, which we can bring together in the program.
Currently, we can offer all basic certifications (CSM, CSPO and CSD) and the advanced and professional level for scrum masters (A-CSM and CSP-SM). We are planning to extend our offer to certification for the advanced and professional level for product owners (A-CSPO and CSP-PO) as soon as possible.
History & outlook
We started in autumn 2019 with three CSM candidates and are now finishing three programs with five candidates each (CSM, CSPO and CSD).
Upcoming, in autumn 2020, we will start our third generation with 32 participants. We will have three programs — with mentors who have already passed the program.
From 2021 on we will also offer programs for the advanced and professional level. Bettina Ruggeri (CTC & Path2CSP-Educator) will accompany them to their certification by Scrum Alliance.
Conclusions
We (Bettina Ruggeri, Peter Müller, Sven Schnee), who developed the program together, are “naturally” enthusiastic. We see success in ever growing knowledge, in the development of a shared mindset and in the extended cooperation of participants. Plus, we get respective feedback from the participants and from our leadership.
Our wish, that this program would produce agile multipliers, has come true.
We have also said to ourselves on several occasions: “This is where we can really contribute — and that’s what makes work fun.”
For more stories of how to turn knowledge into success check out our upcoming blog posts, where participants with different roles will share their view of the program.
References
● Agile-Living: Apprentice Programm, http://agile-living.com/Apprentice Programm/, in German, last visited 2020–08–20.
● Scrum Alliance: Certifications by Scrum Team Role, https://www.scrumalliance.org/get-certified, last visited 2020–08–20. From this page you can read more about the individual certification paths and access the respective learning objectives.
