Bootstrapping the Learning Process

What is the hardest part of the learning process? For me, it is getting started. When I start learning something new, I typically have very little context to work with. I have a list of questions a mile long, and no answers. In layman’s terms, I have no idea what I’m doing. However, as I explore the new idea or skill -- through reading, experimenting, and imitating -- I begin to find answers to some of my questions. Over time, I do enough exploring that I finally start to gain some mastery, or at least know a lot of ways not to master that skill or implement that idea...I believe Thomas Edison said the same thing about the lightbulb.

What if there was a way to “hack” the learning process, making it faster to get started with the learning journey? Sounds crazy, right? Well, we can’t “hack” away the reading, experimenting, and imitating portion of learning. If you want to be good at something, be prepared to roll up your sleeves and do a lot of hard -- and rewarding -- work. However, there are tools that can address the problem of being context starved at the start of the learning journey. You can get the basic supplies needed to get to the experimenting phase quickly.

At Ford, we provide our development teams with a suite of tools aimed at accelerating the creation of new projects. We call this suite /dev/central/station (inspired by Michigan Central Station). It provides tools for setting up a kanban board, digital retrospective board, source code repository, build pipeline, and SpringBoot project. So, while our development teams are still responsible for studying up on test-driven development and 12 factor apps, our tooling takes care of the setup work.

And believe me, this makes a big difference! Earlier this year, I embarked on a journey to create a virtual learning board using Spring Boot and Pivotal Cloud Foundry. However, at that time, most of my development experience was with .NET and Node.js. I didn’t know the first thing about Spring Boot or PCF. And being limited to only a few hours per week (for this particular side-project), I needed something that could get me started fast and correctly. Using the tools in /dev/central/station, I was able to setup a new fully-initialized Spring Boot project (source-controlled and ready for cloud deployment) in just a few minutes. As a result, I was able to focus on building my application and delivering value to customers right away. Of course, I still had plenty of learning to do as I went along. But using the developer quickstart tools meant that I was able to start experimenting, learning, and delivering value immediately.

So if your development team does not yet have tooling for bootstrapping new projects, I highly recommend setting some up! It will shrink the time required to turn an idea into an experiment, thus enabling your team to begin validating their learning faster and deliver value at market speed.