Ok, do you feel up to continue this journey? Or just dying to go watch the last episode of The Simpsons? Hey, trust me: this was only the beginning, it is worth reading the entire ordeal! Like I’ve said: I’m no better, since I get easily distracted online with whatever!

But I take my career seriously, and training is an important part of my development as a software consultant. So, at the scheduled time me and thirty-four other people joined the Zoom meeting and the class started.

The trainer introduced himself; an eloquent guy, very funny, so funny that I thought he sounded like Luccas Neto, a well-known Brazilian youtuber that does goofy kid’s videos! We were off to a good start.

An unorthodox way of teaching?

First, he explained the training process, emphasizing that his teaching method was based in the suffering theory. Basically, this theory advocates that you need to suffer in order to learn! Well, this kind ‘a didn’t surprised me because I had always felted like this, although I was hoping this time was different.

To begin the training, he introduced us Miro (not the painter, but equally artsy!): an application to work on creative projects, discuss designs, have brainstorming sessions, create mind maps and use boards. I loved this tool, so intuitive and with lots of potential.

We were then asked to write some basic information on a post-it, like name, company, role, and country. After, we had to distribute ourselves in five groups previously created for this purpose. Each group represented a company and the idea was to work together to find a solution for a fictitious client who was represented by the trainer.

Are we really learning?

Not wanting to be a spoiler, it all started to look like an interactive playground: I was totally engaged! Suddenly, all of us were part of a team that worked to find the solution for this imaginary client who wanted our fictional marketing company to increase its sales through social networks.

The entire course was structured around a scope of possible scenarios, as if the various groups were competitor companies working for the same project. As the class progressed, each of us had to complete different challenges through Miro and exchange ideas that would allow each group individually to come up with their own solution, gathering in private Zoom rooms.

Between sessions, the progress of each group was observed and commented, raising very interesting discussions about the completely different solutions each group had come up for the same challenge.

So far, I haven’t talked about Kanban itself, have I? In fact, while I was completing the challenges, I thought very little about in what the training consisted of. Only at the end the trainer explained the concepts and principles of Kanban, comparing them with what we had learned during our work sessions.

And indeed, we really learned the principles and techniques amidst the chaos! I learned without even remembering I was in class, just playing pretend. It was also great to learn and experience from failure, which happened in some challenges, and I even made friends from “my” micro-company.

Some conclusions about online training.

As the course was not just practical and to show the efficiency and advantages of Kanban, the last couple hours were dedicated to present some real cases in which the methodology was adopted and produced interesting results.

You may wonder if this type of learning is for everyone? I believe it isn’t. But it’s only because we are all different people, some of us like to learn by reading or just listening, others do not like to interact while learning (trust me, I come from a computer engineering bachelor’s degree, I know what I am talking about).

But for me, if courses were all like this, I think I would become a full-time student.

Rui Maciel
Polarising Business Analyst

Support Links:
https://k21.global/
https://agileontheroad.eu/#hero

Know more about Polarising’s teams and check our job opportunities.

I have never been a big fan of online training, or face-to-face for that matter. Honestly, listening to someone sharing information with a set of slides has always been a drag. It depends a lot on the person giving the training: is his tone of voice dull? I’ll fall asleep after 5 minutes!

How many ways can there be to make a training session uninteresting and a totally waste of time? If I have a pen and paper, I start to draw my best Picasso. Probably, I’ll just begin to insanely search for absurd topics on my cell phone, or start conversations with friends about extremely important matters, like “a girl likes my Instagram photo, does she want me?!”

In my opinion, there are countless ways of passing on knowledge, at least from a trainee’s perspective. Yet, the traditional way still prevails, and it doesn’t work that well for me, proving itself ineffective and causing me some frustration.

The typical (boring) teaching approach.

I understand that having the help of a script and digress around the subject is the safest approach for who’s presenting. But the probability of the audience making random questions rather than those that actually matter, just gives the trainer the perfect escape exit in case he gets lost.

There is also the case where the trainer himself experiences some difficulties, especially when there are more experienced and eager to learn students that will keep interrupting to ask questions. From my point of view that can be a problem because the trainer is then focused on their doubts, and the entire class becomes bored and feeling insecure by not being as much into the subject.

Unfortunately, both these teaching approaches are very close to what I have most been in touch with.

Can online training be something totally different (maybe exciting)?

Nowadays, IT companies are investing even more on their training programs. Teams must be competitive but also work constantly on their skills to keep up. To do that, Polarising designed a training program that each consultant can tailor to their technical and soft skills needs, but above all, that challenges and excites us.

Polarising’s training program is built considering some of the best partners in the education market, like K21. In short, and trust me: they aren’t pay me to advertise, K21 is a Brazilian worldwide company that advocates business evolution through training, coaching and mentoring, with a very similar positioning to Polarising: Agile.

We are about to enter the Kanban zone.

I decided to check on what courses K21 has under the module “Agile on the Road Europe“. I was eager to go back to learning something new and two of their courses caught my attention, both were exactly what I was looking for.

The first course I took was Kanban System Design. It is an intensive 2-day course consisting of 2 online sessions (via Zoom) of 8 hours each. Ok… 8 hours in 2 sessions doesn’t sound too encouraging, does it? The schedule was not that attractive either, as the time difference from Brazil is 4 hours less than Portugal and my lunch break would be at 5pm!

I was even more demotivated after talking to some of my colleagues who had attended the course in the past and weren’t impressed, in fact the feedback was somewhat negative.

But as the good adventurer I am (not really), I decided to go on this scary journey and ordered 50 capsules of coffee and prayed for the best.

(to be continued)

Rui Maciel
Polarising Business Analyst

Support Links:
https://k21.global/
https://agileontheroad.eu/#hero
https://kanban.university/

Know more about Polarising’s teams and check our job opportunities.