Theoretical knowledge (training) is as essential as your practical experience.

It’s tough to acquire both while working in a full-time stressful environment. 

Sometimes we have to get acquainted and work with new technologies, architectures, and methodologies that we may not have complete knowledge about. And we often tend to confuse the technical jargon with the literal meaning of the terminologies due to inadequate theoretical knowledge of the concepts within the technology.

A good example I can share is:

When I started with agile methodology and the concept of scrum (that probably came following the RUGBY match style), I started to know terms like “product backlog” or “sprint backlog” and the way I perceived the word “backlog” is as “an accumulation of something, especially uncompleted work” and therefore to me, a sprint backlog was something that was not accomplished by the end of that particular sprint. Silly, isn’t it?

But when I found that the word “backlog” also used as “or matters that need to be dealt with” – and then it completely makes sense and I understood the terms like “product backlog” or “sprint backlog” used in a scrum. And thereafter, I started telling everyone that the word “backlog” in scrum means “tasks/items to do”, either in product level or a sprint level.

This is just a case, I have many more such experiences to share. The bottom line is:

The process of working with various technologies, methodologies without having a basic theoretical knowledge could hamper the performance and create a gap in understanding the process which could lead to a substantial issue in the project.

Hope some of you will agree!