Agile’s October 2018 Training Survey

By Michael Sinnott, UCD Agile

What happens after training with UCD Agile – is the training used, what is used in what way, what helps and what impedes?  We use our annual October survey to find out and below is some of what we learned in October 2018.

We asked five questions:

Headline:  83% of trainees are using their training, 78% are being encouraged and supported in this, 66% are involved in collaboration, the favourite two tools are process mapping and the 5 Whys, and the biggest calls on Agile are for more training and more support for teams.  The chart below shows use of the various tools training introduces.

Favoured tools

The survey cohort was the 183 colleagues who took White Belt/Fundamentals of Lean and/or Yellow Belt training with UCD Agile between May 2017 and April 2018.  Why this pattern?  We give folks a bit of time to have begun using what they learn on the training – hence the April to October gap – and we do not do broad surveys very often – hence the year cohort .  This 183 took 197 training sessions with us, with seven of the cohort leaving since they took training.  Of the 176 currently working in UCD, 43 responded to the survey (24%) and a bunch were on leave of one kind or another when we surveyed, giving about a 30% response rate.

Looking at the overall picture, the ‘using’ (83%) and ‘encouraged’ (78%) responses are encouraging.  The ‘tool use’ responses are interesting for two reasons – that there was detail about what tools are in use and that tool used is more focused on the ‘early engagement’ tools like process mapping, 5 why’s: to editorialise, the audience is enthusiastic but may not be using Lean in depth.

Also interesting is that 13 comments named some mix of ‘time, resources and opportunity’ as the biggest inhibitors in using Lean.  Given what Lean is about, this might be an echo of the not unfamiliar challenges of “I’m too busy to make things more efficient” and “making things better is an option, the day job is a ‘must’”, perhaps even an environment in which efficiency is not a guiding self-measure.

Overall we see the survey not so much as representative but as an indicative commentary from those who chose to respond, providing some insight into the thinking and experience of the more or less engaged.  The qualitative side – the free text responses – are therefore quite interesting, as expanded on below.

What lessons has Agile drawn from the survey?  We take the following as action areas prompted by the survey:

• Make the Agile Community of Practice more visible
• Provide more ‘whole team’ training/workshopping opportunities
• Continue the focus on team lead skills
  • What is needed, beyond our new Lean Operations and Remit Mapping training offerings, to give team leads the skills they want to both managing their team’s engagement with continuous improvement and their ability to support staff who want to develop in this space?
• Continue the focus on creating the systematic use of the skills and competencies Agile promotes as comments do not indicate strong growth of a more systematically focused local environment.
• Better leverage training events and connections to explore needs and opportunities with the individuals/teams involved.

Our many thanks to all those who took part in the October 2018 survey.

Now for the detail.

79 people took Yellow Belt (full day) training, 79 took Fundamentals of Lean for UCD (half day), and 39 White Belt (half day).  The difference between Fundamentals of Lean and White Belt is that Agile directly teaches Fundamentals whereas our training partner takes the White Belt.  In the same timeframe 11 colleagues took on larger Green Belt projects, with their associated six days of training.

First, the yes/no questions.

Y/N: Have you been using some of what you were introduced to during training?

Y/N: Have you been encouraged/supported locally to work on projects or process improvements?

Y/N: Collaborating:  Are you working with any colleagues, in your own team or outside it, addressing issues, ‘making things better’ – work in which the Agile training can help?

Free text responses were categorised, looking for patterns and themes in the responses.

Where does encouragement come from?

When it comes to being inhibited, in some way, in using the ideas and skills which form the training, what is going on?  Here we look at the ‘inhibited’ category across the questions.

Time, resources and opportunity are the biggest inhibitors in using Lean.  Given what Lean is about, this might be an echo of the not unfamiliar challenges of “I’m too busy to make things more efficient” and “making things better is an option, the day job is a ‘must’”.

What more can Agile do to promote all this good stuff?

And lastly, the survey gave the chance to tick on tools in use.  It is great to see some of the fundamental tools in use but interesting, also, to note the shape of the bar chart below.  We take this to reflect that Lean tools are in good general use but that more structured projects, which will use a broader spectrum of tools, are not so common.  

Many thanks to all of you who took part in the survey.  We are always interested in comments, feedback and suggestions so be sure to contact Agile if there is something we need to hear or a conversation you want to have.