Have you ever tried to teach someone given-when-then who doesn’t want to learn?
That question came up recently. As I thought of the question, it changed into the following one:
Have you ever tried to teach someone ANYTHING who doesn’t want to learn?
I often run into that with BDD, TDD, and even automated testing in general.
Trying to understand why somebody doesn’t want to learn something is essential. We may find out the person has other priorities.
No .NET for the Foxhead
I once tried to teach .NET to a FoxPro developer significantly older than me.
He politely declined, sharing that he had only a few years before retiring.
He appreciated my efforts but had no intention of continuing with software development post-retirement.
His current skills were enough to get him through those years.
“No TDD for me, no sir…”
In many other cases, developers who had a bad experience with TDD didn’t feel inclined to try it anymore.
Upon further conversation, I learned that they often heard, “you’re doing it wrong.”
They had never received proper teaching and coaching.
Grow Appreciation First
It usually takes a lot of work to learn something we don’t appreciate.
A few friends have tried to teach me about American Football and Baseball. I have retained nothing of what they taught me, as I have no interest in either sport, and my friends didn’t do a convincing job of helping me appreciate them.
Teaching developers who are okay with messy code the benefits of TDD or refactoring is challenging.
It’s equally difficult to teach the benefits of BDD to developers whose success metrics don’t include business value.
Succeeding and Failing at Teaching
Over the years, I’ve succeeded at growing developers’ appreciation of those things.
But I’ve also failed at it a few times, and that’s ok.
Those experiences taught me new ways to help others, increasing my success rate.
Sometimes, we teach, but the lesson doesn’t sink in.
The lesson could have been delivered better to connect with the person.
It is also possible that the person didn’t receive the lesson at the right time. They may come around to it.
“Oh, now I see it…”
During a consulting engagement, the team saw how I effectively used productivity tools.
I offered to teach them, and they accepted and adopted the tool and approach.
A few weeks later, one team member said they had to reach out to a former colleague and apologize for not paying much attention when he tried to share the same tool and approach with the team.
Learning to Teach
When teaching, we should make an effort not to get discouraged if people either don’t want to learn or have difficulties learning, and ask ourselves:
- What questions can I ask them so I can look for better ways to teach them?
- What can I learn from this experience?
- How can I improve my approach the next time I try teaching this?
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