Promiscuous Pairing and Beginner’s Mind

Embrace Inexperience

Arlo Belshee

The Project

• 1000 C++ classes

• -30 to 180 Days ‘Till Broke

• 2 to 5 year sales cycle

• 3 to 11 member team

• Experimentation driven process

Why Be Promiscuous?

• “It’s the people, Stupid!”

• Beginner’s Mind: high velocity without Flow

• Use your talents

• Maximize pair-net: transfer information faster

• Build stronger teams

Promiscuous Pairing

• Practices:– Pair Churn– Team Tasks– Least-qualified Implementer

• Theory:– Beginner’s Mind– Competencies vs. skills– Team Accountability and Responsibility

Pair Churn: Beginner’s Mind

• Highly productive

• The human mind’s optimal learning state

• Thrives on change

• High energy, high attention, highly associative

• Uncomfortable

Pair Churn: Useful Miscommunications

• Creativity!

Pair Churn: Apply Your Talents

• Rotate pairs to meet task needs

• Apply multiple combinations of people to each problem

• No hard problems

Pair Churn: Technique Telepathy

• Extreme pair net

Team-owned Tasks: Team Accountability

• Critical requirement for growing high-performance teams

• Managers and Coaches find team accountability scary

• The process helps

Team-owned Tasks: Teambuilding

• Interdependence

• Defined but flexible communications

• Trust building

Least-qualified Implementer: Reinforcement

• Beginner’s mind

• Creativity

Least-qualified Implementer: Naturals, Not Domain Experts

• Domain Expert: a specialist in a skill

• Natural: one who possesses a competency

• “Qualified” typically defined by skills

• Skills are quickly learned

• Competencies are more important, but only visible when all have the skills

Least-qualified Implementer: Continuous Learning

• Of course!

• Very short new-hire ramp up time

• Combats Not Invented Here Syndrome

• Allows full utilization of tools

Questions?