--- title: "Learning Mode" url: "https://www.5whys.com/topics/learning-mode.md" canonical: "https://www.5whys.com/topics/learning-mode" updated: "2026-10-27" tags: [] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Leading a software team in learning mode and toward self-organization: growing people, removing bus factors and teaching commitment language." 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 Mode [Topic](https://www.5whys.com/#topics-h) Once a team has some slack time, the team leader's job changes from making the decisions to growing people: challenging them to learn new skills and to solve their own problems. The goal is a self-organizing team that no longer needs the leader to solve its problems. These articles cover the learning and self-organizing stages of a team and what a leader does in each. 1. [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.html) May 17, 2010 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. 2. [New chapter: "Learning" in the book "From chaos to self organization"](https://www.5whys.com/articles/new-chapter-learning-in-the-book-from-chaos-to-self-organiza.html) June 20, 2012 A new Learning chapter is added to From Chaos to Self Organization on Leanpub, split out of Notes to a Software Team Leader, with a two-book bundle link. 3. [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.html) May 9, 2010 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. 4. [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.html) June 18, 2011 Why, in learning mode, a team leader should stop shielding the team from the organization and let sales, marketing and support push their growth. 5. [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.html) May 17, 2010 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. 6. [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.html) September 6, 2013 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. 7. [Grow your "feature teams" into just "teams"](https://www.5whys.com/articles/grow-your-feature-teams-into-just-teams.html) May 1, 2012 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. 8. [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.html) May 6, 2012 Why a team leader should still grow short-term consultants and temporary team members, treating everyone they lead as if they would stay forever. 9. [How to be an effective code coach](https://www.5whys.com/articles/how-to-be-an-effective-code-coach.html) December 12, 2011 How a technical team leader can coach developers through pair programming, writing less code, asking leading questions and letting them solve problems. 10. [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.html) May 1, 2012 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. 11. [The architect as a leader, and other specialists](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-architect-as-a-leader-and-other-specialists.html) May 1, 2012 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. 12. [Leadership and the mature team](https://www.5whys.com/articles/leadership-and-the-mature-team.html) May 18, 2010 Mike Burrows responds to the three maturity stages, arguing self-organization goes beyond self-management and mature teams still need leadership. 13. [How to deal with bad decisions made by the team](https://www.5whys.com/articles/how-to-deal-with-bad-decisions-made-by-the-team.html) November 16, 2009 How a team lead can steer a self-directing team away from bad technical decisions by asking hard questions, based on Mike Cohn's Succeeding with Agile. Every post in the category [Learning Phase](https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/Learning+Phase) (25) · Other topics: [Survival Mode](https://www.5whys.com/topics/survival-mode), [Team Leader Manifesto](https://www.5whys.com/topics/team-leader-manifesto), [Scrum Master](https://www.5whys.com/topics/scrum-master) · [All articles](https://www.5whys.com/articles) --- ## 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/