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Creating structures that automate things people do every day.

Dreyfus model of skill acquisition

I just finished reading Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, by Andy Hunt, as part of my 2018 Tech Reading Challenge. (It fits in the category, “a book about an abstract concept.”) In lieu of a full review, I’m sharing some key takeaways from chapter 2, “Journey from Novice to Expert.”

The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition is a tool to help you understand  how you are doing in a new skill. It can apply to any skill area, such as cooking, writing, bowling, or software development. It comes from a paper by the Dreyfus brothers, published in 1980. In it, they identify five stages of skill development. I’ll stick these at the bottom of the article (It’s a bunch of bulleted lists) and talk about some of my takeaways.

Problems

The Dreyfus model helps us understand a few different common problems in the world of professional software development.

First is a tendency to over-rate our own abilities. This can happen when we don’t know what we don’t know. This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Second is when we decide to stop learning, and yet think that expert status has been achieved. This has been described as the expert beginner, and Erik Dietrich has a set of articles about it over at his blog.

The Dreyfus model does not address how large or small a skill is scoped, but it seems you can break this up into small pieces. For example, the skill of unit testing is separate from the skill of refactoring, or from designing for test. In The Art of Unit Testing, Roy Osherove lists these as separate skills.

No one size fits all

My big takeaway from the 5 stages is that it can help explain why I am uncomfortable in different problem solving situations. For example, if I’m being asked to fit into a strict set of rules, and yet solve a problem that is very familiar to me, I can chafe a little. The rules are more suited to a novice, and I’m feeling more confident. On the flip side, if I have junior developers on the team, it is a good thing to have conventions, standards, and some guidelines for them to follow. And if I’m pursuing a senior engineer role, it’s my job to create the guidelines.

Movements target certain skill levels

The different stages help us identify how movements can target different skill levels with different attributes. For example, Agile could be viewed as a set of rules, rituals, and ceremonies, which would appeal to the advanced beginner, or it could be viewed as a way to learn and correct past performance, which is something a proficient stage person can do.

A great example of this is applying design patterns. An advanced beginner sees the potential for patterns everywhere! And the end up with something like EnterpriseFizzBuzz.

Conclusion: Check out the book

I recommend picking up a copy of Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, by Andy Hunt. I didn’t even cover all of chapter 2—there’s a great case study on how the model was applied to the nursing profession, and the author ties this to software development. The rest of the book has some great tips for learning and problem solving. I highly recommend it.

The five stages

Novice

  • they need a recipe
  • don’t know what they don’t know
  • prefer walkthroughs, in person if possible

Advanced beginner

  • start to break away from the fixed rule set
  • learn new tasks as the need arises
  • can use advice in a similar context
  • want information fast, but not the big picture
  • no broad-based conceptual understanding of the task set
  • solo learning is more possible

Competent

  • Troubleshooting skills
  • “They can mentor the novices and don’t annoy the experts overly much”
  • informal leadership role
  • more deliberate planning
  • Still can’t apply agile methods to the full extent (!)

Proficient

  • can correct previous poor task performance
  • learn from the experience of others
  • apply maxims (Don’t Repeat Yourself)
  • know what they don’t know

Expert

  • work from intuition
  • unconscious competence (can’t explain why)
  • can take context into account
  • very rare!

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