A collection of our favorite strategies for learning in team.
Roughly organized in order of preference: proven, high-leverage strategies are listed before less-important ones.
The people around you count on your honest reflection, both in your daily interactions and in the retrospectives. Their learning and their job readiness depend on it. Be worthy of their trust.
Requesting feedback often and receiving it well can go a long way towards making a team environment a rich place for mutual growth.
When you begin to work together, be clear about what you are all agreeing to do. What are you committing to accomplish? How will you work and learn together? Where does accountability lie? When and where will you meet?
These and other questions are like good medicine: best taken before things go wrong, rather than after.
The less mutual clarity you have, the greater the chances are for misunderstanding and conflict, which is (usually) a cause of friction for everyone's learning.
Lead without slowing down. Follow without disengaging. Assert yourself. Stay flexible. Don't triangulate. Bring out the best in others.
Every team has a variety of skills and skill levels. Use these internal differences to everyone's advantage: apply cognitive apprenticeship practices to best match team members to the tasks that will challenge them, and let the others (for whom the task would be too difficult) observe, reflect, and inquire.
Best used when the team faces a task that is in or beyond most of the team's ZPD, but which one person is capable of.
Working alongside someone else on the same problem has a lot of advantages: you are less likely to get stuck, distracted, or make glaring mistakes.
There are many sub-strategies and tactics to pairing (Google "pair programming" and you'll get 1,650,000 results). Here are some of the basics to get you started:
- Pace yourself. Pairing can be tiring, be sure to take breaks.
- Keep communication flowing. Share thoughts, ideas, and questions.
- Always aim for consent. If you can't agree, find a compromise. If you can't compromise, agree to disagree.
Best used when you want to go far together, optimize for quality, and avoid team fragmentation.
The most difficult problems are often made easier simply by putting more heads together.
Whether you are actively pairing, building together with the team, or engaging in a group design and problem-solving session, it is helpful to have everyone together. There is strength and intelligence in numbers.
Many of the challenges your teams will face will be new (and possibly intimidating) to everyone on the team. No one person will be able to propose a solution, or even know where to begin. You'll have to rely on each other to figure it out.
Best used when the team faces a task that is challenging for everyone (i.e. the whole team is in their ZPD).
Completing projects means that you'll have to get good at splitting up the workload. It's not always possible for everyone to work on every part of the project—sometimes you have to divide the workload.
There is a greater risk of chaos with this approach, so it's good to employ some tactics to manage the complexity. Be disciplined about communication. Track your work in a shared place, and keep it updated. Write exceptionally clear specifications and follow them diligently. Review each other's work frequently.
A bonus of this approach is that it can allow team members greater flexibility to work on aspects of the project that are most relevant to their learning.
Best used when there is the need for high productivity in a short amount of time.
One of the pitfalls of working in teams constantly is that you may not have to face challenges on your own and learn what you are really capable of without your team's support and leadership.
A way to address this is to parallelize (each team member does the same task on their own) and then synchronize (meet back up and share/analyze each other's work).
This is a good way to test yourself. You will likely discover areas where you surprise yourself with how much you know, and other areas where you struggled even though you felt confident in your abilities.
Best used when you and your team are interested in developing greater self-awareness and gauging your abilities.