What learning to ride

motorbikes taught me
about being agile
Emily Webber
@ewebber

The intro
Practice and discipline can lead
to thinking less and being more
agile

Photo by RobD

*pretty much what I look like on a motorbike

What I actually look

like most of the time

Photo by Simon Lane

Memory
Declarative (explicit)

Non-declarative (implicit)

Facts that can be

consciously recalled.
Things that we
declare or explicitly
stored and retrieved

The ability to recall

facts and concepts,
often referred to as
common knowledge.
Muscle memory and
auto pilot

Declarative (explicit)
The name of your first pet
Your partners birthday
Your primary school teacher
What you had for breakfast

Non-declarative (implicit)
Your name
The difference between a cat
and a dog
Using a phone
How to find 1st gear in a car

My Memory
Declarative (explicit)

Non-declarative (implicit)

Weight
Indicators
Mirrors
Foot gears

Balance
Clutch control
Road awareness
Shoulder observation

Recalling explicit
memory takes more effort
than implicit memory

How do
memories
move from
explicit to
implicit?

Illustration by JE Theriot

We learn through experience

(and failing)

Photo by echiner1

Kolbs model of learning

Having an experience
(Concrete
experience)

Reflecting on it
(Reflective
observation)

Trying out what

youve learned
(Active Experimentation)

Learning from it
(Abstract
Conceptualisation)

Dreyfus model of skill acquisition

Novice

Rules

Advanced
beginner

Competent

Proficient

Expert

Intuition

It takes 10,000 hours of practice

to make you an expert of
anything

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers

Kata

Photo by Mike Oliveri

Toyota Kata
1. Understand what goal we want to
achieve
2. Grasp our Current Condition
3. Set the next challenge on the path
to that goal
4. Run small experiments through the
unknown towards that goal
methodsandtools.com/archive/toyotakata.php

I almost passed

How can I stop

forgetting to
switch my
indicators off?

Practice makes perfect

We learn by doing
Implicit memory != explicit memory

Agile ceremonies help you

practice being agile

Being good at them is like

being a black belt in karate

Collaborative learning
raises the performance
level of everyone

http://tep.uoregon.edu/resources/librarylinks/articles/benefits.html

Practicing regularly and often

as a team will help you
become more expert and
implicitly agile

Thanks
This is me:
Emily Webber
emilywebber.co.uk
@ewebber