Open Question
- Time: 2-5 minutes
Pose an open question to do with the topic of the session, that has many possible answers.
- Variant 1: Ask people to contribute their ideas via sticky notes. Wait until several notes have been added and no more seem to be appearing. Read out the notes and physically group related notes together. Thank people for their answers and move on.
- Variant 2: Put people into pairs or small groups to discuss the open question for a few minutes.
- Variant 3: Same as variant 2 but with a whole-group follow-up. Ask each group to present their ideas and write up what they say on notes where everyone can see them. Later groups that were going to suggest something that a previous group has already contributed can skip to their next item.
Benefits
People like to show that they already know something about a topic. Everyone has a chance to get involved in this activity, especially in variants 2 and 3. Variants 1 and 3 will help you get an idea of their prior knowledge. Sometimes someone comes up with an amusing answer, and you can all laugh and appreciate them for that, which builds group connections.
Used in these Learning Hours
- Change Signature
- Code Reading - Scanning
- Code Smells - Introduction
- Code Smells - Summaries
- Design for Approval Testing
- From Ask Mode to Agent Mode
- Git Interactive Rebase
- Introduction to Nullables
- Leap Years with Approvals
- Lift Kata with Approvals
- Lift-Up Conditional on Gilded Rose
- Modelling vs Diagramming
- Printer Design
- Selecting and ordering test cases
- Shortcuts with Visual Studio + ReSharper or Rider
- Simplify Conditional
- Take Smaller Steps
- Test Desiderata
- Testing Private Methods
- Triangulation
- Using TDD to write a Leap Years function
- Vocabulary for Refactoring