I’ve recently been thinking about how we build our skills when we work in teams, more, how do we as software developers become expert at what we do? Is it an organic process or do most who gain expertise in particular areas of software development actively pursue the knowledge? Is it mostly about self-study or the environment or some sort of combination of both? The point is, if we can somehow get to the root and distill the special magic of how developers become experts, we can try and build this expertise within our teams in a much more targeted way as opposed to waiting for it to happen without any direct intervention. Sounds intriguing doesn’t it, ‘building’ experts rather than waiting for them to emerge. Most places will have some kind of training program, or ad-hoc training courses that you can go on, but I have never seen any team actually directly try to build up an expert (in a particular skill) within the team, over the course of time. It would surely be a chancy undertaking, how can you tell if a person is even capable of gaining expertise and even if they did, how do you measure the extent of this expertise? I am not the first person to ask these questions :), so lets look at some of the existing body of knowledge on the subject.
The Dreyfus Model
In case you didn’t know, the Dreyfus model deals with how people attain and master skills. The Dreyfus model is applicable on a per skills basis and recognizes five 5 stages of development for a person to get to expert level.
- Novice – at this stage a person doesn’t really know how to be successful at what they are doing, they don’t want the big picture, but instead want unambiguous rules that will allow them to successfully accomplish their tasks. They need quick successes and will be confused when anything out of the ordinary happens.
- Advanced Beginner – want to find the information they need quickly, they have some context regarding what they are doing but still not really interested in the big picture. They can use the skill at a more competent level than a novice but will still have trouble when things go wrong.
- Competent – have the ability to see the big picture and how it would affect the outcomes. They can deal with problems when something unexpected occurs they are able to draw on their experience when necessary. However their ability to reflect on what they do is still somewhat limited.
- Proficient – need the big picture and will not function well without it. They can reflect on how well they are doing and draw upon their experience to improve. Can draw relevant information from the experience of others rather than taking it in as a whole.
- Expert – no longer require rules and guidelines to function, will intuitively know what to do in a given situation. They will also constantly seek to find better ways of doing things.
If you want to know more about it you can always go to our second most favorite website (the first being Google :)). Basically what the Dreyfus model postulates is that novices will need strict rules and guidelines to succeed while experts will be stifled by strict rules and will not be able to apply their expertise/intuition to the fullest. In a software development context this means that a strict process would benefit a beginner and they will be more effective at what they do while more expert people will need a more organic environment to allow them to take advantage of their expertise. Andy Hunt examines the Dreyfus model in quite a bit of detail in his book, “Pragmatic Thinking And Learning: Refactor Your Wetware” and he presents it in a very favorable light regarding it’s usage in software development. While I find nothing wrong with the model itself, I do believe it misses a vital facet of the picture.
Does It Hold Up For Software Development
Applying the Dreyfus model – to software development especially – is potentially a great way to allow more expert people on the software team, the use of their fullest abilities, however it does nothing to help us build experts from the more junior people on the team! More than that, I believe that rigidly applying the Dreyfus model in the first two stages of development (novice and advanced beginner) will actually hurt the chances of a person attaining expert level knowledge in a particular skill.
Things are never that clear-cut when it comes to software. We may be lucky to have experts on our team, but on the other hand we may not. With the vast array of skills that are necessary in modern software development, most of the time the majority of people will be at most advanced beginners in a particular skill and sometimes not even that. And anyway how do you define a skill in the first place, there are no clear boundaries. Being an expert in one skill might make you competent or proficient in a dozen others and you would not be well served by being treated as a novice when it comes to those skills.
I don’t believe you can build a healthy agile team if you attempt to treat your junior people like Dreyfus novices or advanced beginners, especially when you take the typical developer mindset into account. Ever looked at a piece of code and thought that you could do better, and were itching to try? Well most developers have, it is just how we think, regardless of what our skill level is in that particular area. I believe the best thing you can do regarding the more junior people on your team would be to treat them in a similar fashion as you would your experts. Show them the big picture, it is patronizing to think that they don’t want to know this and it would confuse them. Put a mentoring safety net in place but allow your junior people room to grow and experiment, the people who truly have potential will bloom in this environment. The rule is guidance with a light hand, NOT a clear set if hard and fast rules. Rigid processes and clear unambiguous guidelines are a crutch that no developer should allow themselves to get used to. No modern software project will have the luxury of clarity and no ambiguity, the sooner everyone gets used to it the sooner they will become more effective and productive.
So Can We BUILD Experts
It is still very fuzzy. I don’t believe the Dreyfus model helps in any significant way to build expertise within a team. It will however do us good to keep this model in mind when creating an environment where a software team can thrive. Besides relying on a developer’s personal drive to learn and get better; and providing support if needed, I don’t know of any other way to ensure that expertise develops within a software team. As usual it comes down to trying to hire great people and trying to create the right kind of atmosphere where those people can succeed. The rest you leave to nature.
I would like to come back to this topic at some point, so if anyone has any tips or ideas regarding building expertise within individuals in a software team, I would love to hear what you have to say.
Image by Marco Bellucci