Learning Hour is a non-lunch hour for learning. All are invited, not just folks on the teams I’m coaching. What’s a good topic for Learning Hour? Anything other than what we’re working on. Some examples:

• Agile in 3 Minutes
• Care and Feeding of T-Shaped People
• Strangle Your Legacy Code
• Test-Driven Development (any language, any test framework)
• Behavior-Driven Development For Everyone
• Managing Dependency Risks
• Running Effective Meetings
• Bring Your Whole Self To Work
• The When-To-Stop Kata
• Lean Coffee

More ideas from Llewellyn Falco, from whom I learned about Learning Hour while pair coaching.

Learning Hour builds a habit, an expectation, and an insight: we’re almost always learning, we’ll almost always have time to learn, and it almost always pays off.