‘Agility’ is a quality businesses have prioritized more and more in recent decades. As with many workplace trends (looking at you, digital whiteboards), this one originated in software development and then spread to other business practices as teams saw their value.
It’s no surprise that eventually this concept made its way into learning and development (L&D) in the form of agile learning. Agile learning helps your workforce keep up with change—whether it’s shifting market conditions, new tech, or emerging industry practices.
There’s a very good reason to believe learning agility will have a long-term impact on L&D. In the wake of the pandemic, research from McKinsey & Company found that organizations that had successfully adopted agile methodologies before lockdowns outperformed those who had not across many important metrics. When ‘business as usual’ went out the window, agile clearly demonstrated its value during the most disruptive global event of our lifetimes.
Are agile learning practices something your L&D team should adopt? How is it even formally defined? And how do you make it stick? This guide answers every important question you might have about applying agile learning in your employee development.
What is agile learning?
In many ways, the horizon has gotten closer in business. Due to the market's unpredictability, global events, and the pace of technological change, it’s harder for businesses to see ahead. Now, it’s desirable for businesses not to lock themselves into longer-term plans.
Agile learning is a newer L&D methodology that responds to unpredictability. It prioritizes flexibility, collaboration, and speed (both in the creation and consumption of learning). Content is developed in shorter rounds, with feedback from learners and instructors informing how the next round takes shape. You don’t ignore medium- and long-term plans, but an agile learning program adapts to the needs of people here and now.
How did agile move from software to L&D?
Learning agility is a direct descendant of Agile software development, first codified in 2001. Before then, large software development projects required complex project management that locked businesses and budgets into one, two, or five-year plans.
Projects structured this way were very difficult to adjust if customer needs changed, a market dried up, or the company’s strategic goals shifted. In response, software developers sought a new way to work that would help them complete large projects more efficiently. Agile is the resulting methodology.
Agile developers build software in smaller chunks, gather frequent feedback, and incorporate customer responses into the next short development cycle. They maintain forward progress on larger projects with grander designs but can easily change course.
Agile learning vs. traditional learning methods
Where traditional L&D programs typically follow a set curriculum and schedule, agile learning embraces the principles of iteration and adaptability. Learning occurs in shorter sessions, and next steps only occur after you collect data and feedback. You make continuous adjustments to your learners’ paths based on their evolving needs. By doing so, your L&D team creates better experiences for your learners and develops skills most relevant to your organization’s current needs.
Let’s consider how an agile methodology might compare to something more familiar, like the ADDIE model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation). If you’re following the ADDIE model, you design your entire five-stage plan based on the information you have at the outset. If something derails your plan three months from now, you might need to scrap the entire thing, and your initial work will be largely wasted.
Following an agile learning process, you’d still set out with final goals in mind, but you break up planning into stages in between rounds of instruction. Planning isn’t front-loaded, so you risk less wasted planning time and are better situated to adjust to emerging conditions.
The benefits of switching to agile learning
Shifting to shorter cycles of learning, data collection, and planning comes with clear benefits. At a high level, you’ll waste less time planning and be able to adapt to change in unpredictable business environments much faster.
You’ll help your employees develop new skills when they’re needed most, driving both career growth and business results. But agile learning doesn’t stop there. Learners trained in this way often carry the principles to the rest of your organization.
An increased customer focus
Agile learning’s emphasis on rapid iteration, built around continuous feedback loops, creates an environment where business decisions are driven by what customers value most. If your customers’ needs suddenly change (and they will), your services need to adapt too, or you risk losing them. Agile learning can help your workforce stay current when unpredictable needs arise. When your L&D team hears feedback about these evolving needs, they can quickly update training to help learners adapt and meet the moment with confidence.
Enhanced overall efficiency
An agile approach to learning encourages experimentation for both learners and instructors, allowing them to try things out and be okay with making mistakes. With shorter feedback loops and learning cycles, the risk of failure reduces. This can lead to levels of creativity and newfound productivity techniques your organization might not encounter otherwise. By prioritizing knowledge sharing and a willingness to try new ideas, agile learning cultivates a more dynamic workplace.
Improved cross-team collaboration
Learning agility encourages open dialogue among learners and educators. It’s a much more collaborative approach to L&D that can bring together participating employees from across your organization. We’ve seen that one of the secondary benefits of this is improved cross-team functionality.
Agile learning practices
Learning is a continuous process. Agile methodologies embrace this as a foundational principle—learning, assessing, and iterating on your plans is the core loop. Many traditional L&D practices align well with agile coursework, but certain activities are better suited than others.
Some of the most popular learning agility practices include:
- Microlearning—Microlearning delivers short, concise lessons, typically only a few minutes long. Think helpful pop-ups (the good kind) built into the tools people already use. For example, a tutorial on creating a pivot table is available within Excel. It’s an effective way to share essential information with minimal disruption to workflows.
- Flipped learning—In traditional learning, material is usually delivered during live class time, and group work is often assigned for later. Flipped learning works exactly as the name implies. Students review core content before scheduled sessions, and then the live scheduled time is spent on discussions. This aligns very well with agile learning, as instructors can more easily collect feedback on student progress when they are all present together.
- Peer learning—Another feedback-rich mode of learning that aligns well with agile methods is peer learning. Here, workers learn from each other during work, informally or formally. Adding even a bit of structure to how feedback is gathered will generate insights into what matters to your team in their day-to-day work.
- Team learning—This is yet another structured peer-to-peer learning mode. Team learning involves designing training tasks that require employees to find solutions collaboratively. You’re facilitating relationship-building along with learning, and the live interaction provides a rich venue for collecting data.
- Mobile learning—Agile learning emphasizes flexibility, and mobile learning is one of the most flexible options available. Your L&D team can deliver learning tools right to your employees’ mobile devices so they can learn anytime, anywhere, even remotely.
- Continuous communication and collaboration—Break down silos within your organization by actively promoting cross-team communication and collaboration. Agile learning thrives on this interconnectedness, building trust and shared understanding across departments. Consider adopting practices like daily scrums—brief meetings or updates—where individuals share their learning progress and any roadblocks they encounter. This transparency helps break down barriers and fosters a sense of shared purpose.
Building an agile learning culture
As much as your tools and processes matter, the biggest shift to agile learning is often mindset. Your L&D team can’t simply roll out a new learning platform. You need to start building a new culture around learning within your organization.
This takes time. Introduce agile learning gradually and give employees time to get used to the new processes. Fortunately, this is very easy to do, since agile emphasizes bite-sized rounds of education followed by feedback. You can introduce a new course within an agile framework and expand from there as you upgrade your entire learning catalog.
Here are a few key principles to help you successfully build a new culture of learning agility within your organization.
Secure organizational buy-in
Clearly communicate your vision for an agile learning culture to your stakeholders, the C-suite, and department heads. Highlight the specific advantages of agile learning for their teams and the organization as a whole. Encourage feedback starting here and address any concerns to ensure broad understanding and support across all departments.
Learn agile from existing practitioners
Remember, agile originated as a software development process. Even if your IT department doesn’t follow agile methodology, there’s almost certainly a programmer or project manager familiar with the practices through certification or a prior job. Seek out these subject matter experts and have them participate in your early learning and development planning. This is also a great opportunity to pioneer cross-team communication and learning agility principles—right here in your own agile program design.
Embrace learner feedback and outcome measurement
While the speed and efficiency of course development are important under agile, the outcomes matter most. That’s why collecting feedback and data is so important. If you don’t know how well your agile learning plan meets your learners’ needs, you’ll slow down the process even further.
Build ways to gather continuous feedback from learners and measure the outcomes of your agile learning initiatives closely. Showing how this approach saves time, uses resources wisely, and creates tangible benefits for learners can help win over any skeptics.
Iterate your processes just like your learning
Agile processes don’t aim to be perfect. They don’t need to be, because you’re planning to iterate shortly regardless. Focus on the rapid production of initial deliverables, followed by the continuous collection of feedback and iterative refinement. Integrate multiple feedback channels within your courses to make the process seamless and efficient—use built-in forms, chat, and AI interaction.
Integrate micro and mobile learning principles
Of all the practices outlined earlier enabled by modern LMSs, microlearning aligns the best with learning agility principles. Complement mobile learning accessibility by breaking down existing, larger courses into focused microlearning modules whenever feasible. And when you need new content, building in a microlearning framework allows you to get material to learners the fastest.
Celebrate learning wins
Publicly recognize and reward employees for their progress in your agile learning coursework. Does data from your LMS show measurable gains after a department undertook new compliance certification? Acknowledge their efforts to your organization. And then encourage a culture of peer support where individuals share what they’ve learned and help each other grow.
Make agility part of your learning strategy
Learning and development needs to keep up with the speed of business. Agile learning offers a framework that prioritizes speed, flexibility, and collaboration.
It takes a combination of empowered L&D staff, technology, and a strong culture of learning to make it happen. The right tech makes all the difference. And a modern LMS makes it easy to create agile learning content and monitor feedback. With Absorb LMS, you can deliver timely, engaging, and continuous training at scale.
