Back to proposals-2013

Title: Gumption traps Reloaded
Proposer: rachel_davies
Proposer: ivan_moore
Type: Workshop
Duration: 90 minutes
Description: In the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values” the author, Robert Pirsig, talks about “gumption traps”; things that sap motivation, such as not having the correct tools. In this workshop, we invite participants to identify gumption traps. We will be drawing influence charts, an approach from Systems thinking, to help groups explore suggestions for how to avoid or combat gumption traps. We ran workshops on this topic at OOSPLA 2004 and ACCU2006, but this incorporates some new material building on ideas from Daniel Pink's book “Drive”.

Intended audience:
Software developers, managers and coaches who would like to avoid gumption traps for themselves and their teams.

Process:
The purpose of the opening presentation is to introduce the topic and lead into group discussion. Participants are invited to share relevant stories with the session group, this leads into a brainstorming session on drawing out factors affecting motivation in software development.

The session participants will then be divided into smaller work groups and given a worksheet on influence charts. Each work group will select a story based on their own experience and work to create an influence chart that shows factors impacting motivation.

To wrap up, each work group will take a turn to present their chart and insights gained to the session group.

Timetable:
  00:00 - 00:05  Introductions
  00:05 - 00:20  Slide presentation on identification of gumption traps, suggestions for how to avoid them
  00:20 - 00:25  Questions
  00:25 - 00:40  Sharing Gumption trap stories
  00:40 - 00:45  Divide session participants into work groups
  00:45 - 01:15  Each group explores a story using influence charts (aka diagram of effects)
  01:15 - 01:30  Each group presents what they learned to the session group


Roger: Yes: this sounds like an interactive session without the problems of only a very limited number of attendees.