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Maria Montessori + Agile Thinking = Scrum

Montessori education is characterized by an emphasis onindependence, freedom within limits, and respect for a childs natural

psychological development, as well as technological advancements insociety.

The overview, picked from wikipedia on Montessori gives us a clearoverlap better Montessori education and Scrum.

Montessori education Scrum

Mixed age classrooms, withclassrooms for children aged 2or 3 to 6 years old by far the mostcommon

Cross-Functional Teams

Student choice of activity fromwithin a prescribed range ofoptions

Tasks Pickup by voluntary method

Uninterrupted blocks of work timeSprints

A Constructivism or discoverymodel, where students learnconcepts from working withmaterials, rather than by directinstruction

Story boards to epic, themecreations and poker planning.

Specialized educational materials

developed by Montessori and hercollaborators

Poker Planning, estimation

techniques, Sprint and ReleasePlanning

Stand-Ups

Just like our Sprint Daily Stand-up where we meet and answer 3questions the Montessori students start their school without anassembly of prayers. A mixed age group of 2 to 6 years, 6 to 9 yearsand 9 to 12 years, 20 students in each set, meet-up in a circle, insilence and each in a turn informs what they learnt yesterday, whatthey like to learn today to the Master in-charge. There are no teachersin a Montessori Education system but similar to our Scrum Master, asservants wait upon a Master.

The child chooses what they want to do for the day. They walk awayfrom the circle, gather the tools they want to learn, walks back to thecircle. The Master or a matured / senior child helps the younger child tolearn the concepts. End of the day or over a week the child learns theconcepts with several practical questions answered, from within.

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Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into theworld - Maria Montessori (MM)

Themes, Epics & Storyboards

We work with a set of raw data from the client, user stories tounderstand clearly and to deliver what is required. We form Epicand Themes to categorize them and match it to deliver in aSprint. When we are ready with our user stories, we finiteourselves with an acceptance criteria and a proper donestatement to draw our boundaries of satisfaction, next in line areestimating the size, Deriving a duration (using the velocity) anddraw up a schedule.

In Montessori, the child picks up an activity and a senior / maturedexplains and plays with the activity to understand not just thegame but series of related things. If a child picks up a world mappuzzle to solve, he / she learns about the game, the colors, thecontinents, countries, shapes, languages, culture, day & nightdifference, date & time and the universe. At the end oflearning, the child needs to write a paragraph or draw what shehas learnt using that activity in a 5*7 card and stick it on thewall.

Performance Reviews

During the activity, the master observes the child, questions the childlike can you draw an atlas by yourself? Can you show me where Indiais? Can you tell me a story of the atlas? And more. and provides afeedback on her qualities of learning in different aspects.

In Montessori, the performance is evaluated over a period of time, notin a fixed test / exams format with questions to be answered andanswered correctly including the ranking that kills the budding minds.

The Scrum Master takes an upper hand to effectively do 3 things, what

I named as 3Cs Communicate, Co-ordinate and Collaborate todeliver. He plays a vital role in organizing and removing impediments.S/He provides effective feedback to the team, to be self organized. Inmatured organizations the Scrum Master provide action orientedfeedback that is used in their appraisal cycle and measured againstobjectives set and goals delivered.

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The Sprint Review and Retrospect is an dynamic learning for eachindividual in the team to understand what he needs to focus onand how he can improve himself. The meeting is a mirror focuson where s/he stands. Matured organizations use this meetingeffectively to action oriented objective setting.

Conclusion:

The overlap seems to be perfect, the key points that I really liked andlearned are

1. Their daily ring (Standup)2. No one assigns tasks, they are voluntarily taken by the child to

play-way-learn.3. Mixed age classroom (Cross Functional teams) &4. Performance Review.