--- title: "Learning Phase: articles" url: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/Learning%2BPhase.md" canonical: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/Learning+Phase" tags: [] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Posts on leading a team in learning mode, covering bus factors, code reviews and coaching, commitment language, go-to architects and growing people." usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Learning Phase: articles Posts on leading a team in learning mode, covering bus factors, code reviews and coaching, commitment language, go-to architects and growing people. HTML: https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/Learning+Phase · 25 linked entries (each is plain Markdown) · Site index: [llms.txt](https://www.5whys.com/llms.txt) - [Two Techniques to Avoid the Bus Factor In your Teams: Push and Pull](https://www.5whys.com/articles/two-techniques-to-avoid-the-bus-factor-in-your-teams-push-an.md) (2013-09-06): How push based and pull based learning help a team remove bus factors, told through an architect who fixed a search server without learning anything. - [Should you grow even a short-term consultant in your team?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/should-you-grow-even-a-short-term-consultant-in-your-team.md) (2012-05-06): Why a team leader should still grow short-term consultants and temporary team members, treating everyone they lead as if they would stay forever. - [If you're looking for a QA to automate your tests, you've started to fail](https://www.5whys.com/articles/if-youre-looking-for-a-qa-to-automate-your-tests-youve-start.md) (2012-05-06): Why hiring a QA person to automate tests keeps a system failing, and steps to grow developers in test automation while the team is in the learning phase. - [Chapter four - commitment language - is online](https://www.5whys.com/articles/chapter-four-commitment-language-is-online.md) (2012-05-02): Chapter four of Notes to a Software Team Leader is out on Leanpub, about commitment language as a first step in the learning stage and integrity thinking. - [What should a good code review look and feel like?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/what-should-a-good-code-review-look-and-feel-like.md) (2012-05-02): How a good code review should feel: short, in person, side by side, done by everyone on the team, and aimed at learning rather than tool comments. - [Grow your "feature teams" into just "teams"](https://www.5whys.com/articles/grow-your-feature-teams-into-just-teams.md) (2012-05-01): Why feature teams built from specialists carry a bad bus factor, and why team leaders should grow them into teams where everyone can do each other's work. - [You're not self organizing if you have a go-to architect](https://www.5whys.com/articles/youre-not-self-organizing-if-you-have-a-go-to-architect.md) (2012-05-01): A quick test for self-organization: if a team must ask an outside architect to finish its work, it is not self-organizing, and the architect should teach. - [The architect as a leader, and other specialists](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-architect-as-a-leader-and-other-specialists.md) (2012-05-01): Why an architect or any specialist on a team is a bottleneck, and should act as a coaching leader who spreads knowledge until they are no longer needed. - [How to be an effective code coach](https://www.5whys.com/articles/how-to-be-an-effective-code-coach.md) (2011-12-12): How a technical team leader can coach developers through pair programming, writing less code, asking leading questions and letting them solve problems. - [Video: How to manage a person who is always late to a standup meeting](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-how-to-manage-a-person-who-is-always-late-to-a-standup.md) (2011-07-30): A YouTube video answering how to handle a team member who is always late to the daily standup, with a different approach for each team maturity stage. - [Video: Ten Mistakes Software Team Leaders Make](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-ten-mistakes-software-team-leaders-make.md) (2011-07-20): Video and slides of a SkillsMatter talk on ten mistakes software team leaders make, from ignoring team maturity to fear of delegation and placating. - [Video: The Mistake at the heart of Agile - Michael Feathers, NDC 2011](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-the-mistake-at-the-heart-of-agile-michael-feathers-ndc.md) (2011-06-17): A note about a Michael Feathers NDC 2011 talk on the mistake at the heart of agile, whose video is gone, tied to getting teams out of comfort zones. - [Burst your team's bubble - stop protecting them from the surrounding organization](https://www.5whys.com/articles/burst-your-teams-bubble-stop-protecting-them-from-the-surrou.md) (2011-06-17): Why, in learning mode, a team leader should stop shielding the team from the organization and let sales, marketing and support push their growth. - [What to do if some people in the team just don't want to take a task?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/what-to-do-if-some-people-in-the-team-just-dont-want-to-take.md) (2011-06-06): How a Scrum team leader should respond when team members won't pick tasks in sprint planning, with different tactics for each team maturity stage. - [What are you going to do about it?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it.md) (2011-02-03): A Lead Better course attendee's email showing how asking a teammate what are you going to do about it, and by when, got a problem solved within hours. - [Exclude a team member – and you’re an idiot](https://www.5whys.com/articles/exclude-a-team-member-and-youre-an-idiot.md) (2010-05-25): Why a team leader must never exclude a difficult team member from meetings or lunch, and why firing should come only after months of trying to grow them. - [The 3 maturity stages of a software team and how scrum fails to identify them](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-3-maturity-stages-of-a-software-team-and-how-scrum-fails.md) (2010-05-17): The chaotic, mid-life and mature stages of a software team, the leadership each one needs, from dictator to coach, and why Scrum Masters miss them. - [The Bus Factor - Why your ‘best’ developer is your biggest problem](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-bus-factor-why-your-best-developer-is-your-biggest-probl.md) (2010-05-17): How to spot a bus factor of one in your team and reduce it with standups, pairing, code reviews and knowledge sharing, including the team leader as one. - [My team keeps breaking their promises. What can I do?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/my-team-keeps-breaking-their-promises-what-can-i-do.md) (2010-05-09): How a team leader can teach a team the language of commitment, spotting words like I'll try, setting end dates and flagging slips before deadlines pass. - [Move-Around kata for team leaders](https://www.5whys.com/articles/move-around-kata-for-team-leaders.md) (2010-02-14): A daily kata for software team leaders in which you walk around, see each teammate's current work and challenge them to find a better solution. - [Creating Team Trust](https://www.5whys.com/articles/creating-team-trust.md) (2009-12-13): Johanna Rothman explains how a team lead builds team trust, starting with yourself: deliver what you promise, stay consistent, and negotiate. - [The Five Dysfunctions of a Team](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-five-dysfunctions-of-a-team.md) (2009-12-08): A summary of Lencioni's five dysfunctions of a team, from absence of trust and fear of conflict to inattention to results, a must-read for team leaders. - [How to influence others](https://www.5whys.com/articles/how-to-influence-others.md) (2009-11-30): Two books for team leaders who want to drive change: How to Win Friends and Influence People for one-on-one influence, and Influencer for the macro level. - [Dev Anti Pattern: Unworkable Machine](https://www.5whys.com/articles/dev-anti-pattern-unworkable-machine.md) (2009-10-24): The developer whose machine is always broken: common phrases, causes such as boredom or bug recreation, and fixes like using a virtual machine. - [4 ways to discover a stuck team member, and what you can do about it](https://www.5whys.com/articles/4-ways-to-discover-a-stuck-team-member-and-what-you-can-do-a.md) (2009-09-06): Roy Osherove recalls being fired as a stuck developer and shows how standups, code reviews, test reviews and pairing help a lead spot and unblock people. --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/