As an “outsider” to education, I am interested in the challenges the education sector must face when asked to respond to change, often with competing priorities, limited resources, and uncertain outcomes. Would Agile, a project management approach widely used in industry, prove useful in assisting schools and kura to navigate through ambiguous, fast-paced change? Rachel Westaway, Project lead.

As an educator, I see the positive possibilities change and innovation has for the education sector and our learners. However, I also see the challenges. As a project manager, I have a growing interest in Agile — as an approach and a mindset to manage complex projects, handle rapid change, and support innovation. This got me thinking about how Agile might address some of the challenges for innovation and transformation in our schools, kura, and Kāhui Ako. Fionna Wright, Facilitator / Project manager.

Together, we thought it could be useful to begin a conversation about Agile and start to form understandings and wonderings about the value Agile could offer to the New Zealand education sector.

Our education system has always been in a state of change. This includes changes in areas of environment, curriculum, assessment, the way we work with others, and even redefining what it means to be “educated”.

More recently, the adjectives ‘transformational’ and ‘innovative’ have been added to describe the change needed to support 21st-century learners. The 2018 ERO report, Leading Innovative Learning in New Zealand Schools, outlines why this kind of change is needed and the mindsets of both leaders and teachers to support successful innovation.

As part of this research, ERO found that successful innovative school leaders:

• are proactive in working with the whole-school community to develop a strong, future-focused vision for their school
• ensure the vision has learner outcomes at its centre
• are well-informed so that decisions build on best practice for 21st-century learners
• have a growth mindset — are supportive of experimentation
• quickly address elements of strategy if those elements are not working
• develop a school culture of continuous improvement to support the vision
• maintain coherence across all domains of the school, aligning everything to the vision
• are effective change managers able to take staff with them on the improvement journey through timely professional development and good communication.

Successful innovative teachers:

• have a growth mindset
• are committed to working in new ways
• work collaboratively
• personalise curriculum and pedagogy to individual learner needs.

This begs the question: How do schools, school leaders, and teachers initiate, cultivate, and grow these qualities? Maybe Agile could offer some answers?

What is Agile anyway?

The Agile Alliance define agile as

“The ability to create and respond to change in order to succeed in an uncertain and turbulent environment.”¹

Originally designed for software development, Agile is a set of values, principles, and practices designed to break down hierarchical silos to emphasise collaboration across multidisciplinary, self-managing teams, build relationships and trust, strengthen organisational capability, and support innovation.²

Agile is a mindset

Figure 1

Diagramme adapted from Dr. Ahmed Sidky. Source: The Agile Mindset.

The key values of Agile

Figure 2

The four key values of Agile for software development are outlined in Figure 2 above. The items on the right, should be not abandoned as there is still value in these items. However, proponents of the Agile Movement value the items on the left (green column) more.

The principles of Agile

The Agile values for software development are supported by a set of principles designed to guide and support a common way of thinking about what is important when times get tough.

1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
10. Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.

Once these values and principles are understood, a range of tools are available to teams to work with. Frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban and Lean provide teams with a suite of toolsets to help embed these values and principles into agreed ways of working.

Due to the success of Agile in the world of software development, it is now widely used in other domains such as product development, marketing, and even HR. So, this raises the question: How about education?

The Agile school’s manifesto

In 2011, inspired by the values and principles of the 2001 Agile Manifesto, founder of Teaching Making Sense Inc, Steve Peha, fleshed out the essential characteristics of Agile schools by proposing a translation to an Agile Schools Manifesto.

The values of the Agile Schools’ Manifesto

Figure 3

Peha has also translated the Agile principles into education speak:

1. Their highest priority is to satisfy the needs of students and their families through early and continuous delivery of meaningful learning.
2. They welcome changing requirements, even late in a learning cycle, and harness change for the benefit of students and their families.
3. They deliver meaningful learning frequently, from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. School and family team members work together daily to create learning opportunities for all participants.
5. They build projects around motivated individuals, give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
6. They recognise that the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a team is face-to-face conversation.
7. Meaningful learning is their primary measure of progress.
8. Their processes promote sustainability. Educators, students, and families should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. They believe that continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances adaptability.
10. Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work done–is essential.
11. The best ideas and initiatives emerge from self-organizing teams.
12. At regular intervals, teams reflect on how to become more effective, then tune and adjust their behaviour accordingly.³

At face value, we believe that it would be hard to suggest that these values and principles do not lie at the heart of many within the New Zealand education sector; so, could an Agile mindset and tools such as Scrum and Kanban offer an opportunity to work differently and more effectively both in the management of the school’s organisations and in the delivery of learning? Is there a role for Agile to assist with innovation and transformation in the education sector?

Wanted! Your feedback, please!

We welcome any feedback and questions. Please comment below or contact Rachel and/or Fionna directly. We aim to follow up on this post accordingly.

Find out more

Agile Alliance
A non-profit organisation with global membership with information about Agile, resources and a code of conduct.

¹ Agile 101. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/

² Rigby, D.K., Sutherland, J., & Takeuchi, H. (2016). Embracing Agile. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/05/embracing-agile

³ Briggs, S. (2014). Agile Based Learning: What Is It and How Can It Change Education? Retrieved from https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/agile-based-learning-what-is-it-and-how-can-it-change-education/

Photo credits:

Feature image (post-it board) by VFS Digital Design on Flickr under CC 2.0.