Maximise learning: Craft skills development

Description

Continuous development of Craft skills (business and delivery domain) is an intensional part of all work to collaborate and create value stream outcomes. This is reflected in outcome goals at all levels, along with the necessary support within the environment, time and ways of working.

This principle acknowledges that developing and improving knowledge, capability, and practices is an essential element to sustain an organisation in a complex and fast-changing world.

Rationale

Delivery time pressure results in the balance of work to learning almost always being in the favour of work - just get it done! Continuously skipping opportunities to develop Craft skills results in demotivated people with out-of-date skills and a less capable organisation. This, in turn, leads to lower quality and quantity of output, which leads to reduced value outcomes. A collateral effect is a higher employee churn rate with the loss of valuable knowledge along with the cost of their replacement.

A deeper focus is put on this principle at scale due to the additional skills and know-how required to implement support for rapid learning cycles across multiple teams - see Amplify Speed and Quality of Learning Cycles.

Related Principles

• Create the environment for people to thrive
• Cultivate learning between teams
• Create a Learning Organisation
• Invest in quality
• Favour Teams with broader Business Domain Competence
• Favour Teams with broader Solution Accountability
• Maximise Team autonomy
• Limit Team Mental Workload - Contending: avoid overloading the team with additional learning load on top of too much delivery work.
• Leadership supports rather than drives the work