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Five Steps to Fast-Track Success It’s every trainer’s nightmare: Retrain a reluctant, scared bunch of programmers and do it yesterday. Here’s how to do it right. IS training manager Heather Lewis watches as a herd of dinosaurs moves with alarming speed across her PC screen directly toward a tiny object. To her horror, the object becomes Lewis herself, fixed like a martyr before the advancing herd. At the last second, the herd turns into a flock of birds. And this is usually when Lewis wakes up. Any training manager can recognize that the latent content of this dream comes from a situation increasingly common in recent years. Following corporate re-engineering, IS management commits to mission-critical projects with short deadlines. These projects require IS to introduce leading-edge information technologies and methodologies, including client/server, object technology, event modeling, joint application development (JAD), rapid application development (RAD), iterative prototyping, distributed databases, data warehouses and data marts. Several of the applications will be deployed on a combination of intranets, extranets and the Internet. Lewis must educate designers and developers on these technologies in only six weeks. And she must do so despite the fact that her company, like most large companies, has substantial numbers of IS dinosaurs. They work on legacy systems, using legacy tools and legacy methodologies. The question that faces Lewis and any training manager at a Fortune 1000 company today: How do you evolve your Jurassic programmers into modern eagles? The answer is fast-track training, a range of techniques that relies on individual initiative and a creative mix of mentoring, instructor-led training, CBT and self-study. Does fast-tracking work? It has its problems. But like Lewis, you often have no choice when the herd descends upon you. Warning. Fast-track dinosaur evolution is no panacea. For herd migration and wholesale species evolution, plan on a more orderly, phased voyage. Fast-track evolution works best with small groups scouting new technology territory on pilot projects and is most frequently used on high-priority death marches when the only thing that counts is meeting the deadline. So, if you have dinosaurs who need training to prepare for crash projects, here's a proven five-step rapid evolution program. Step #1: Define a single primary objective In a fast-track environment, the emphasis is on speed. So you must strictly limit the program scope and make sure that it directly supports the IS goal. This goal is clear: Design, develop and deploy high-quality applications on hard deadlines. Your objective is therefore equally clear: Teach your students only those technologies and methodologies they need in order to build high-priority applications. And get them competent fast. At the same time, plan ahead. While you must teach the skills required for immediate projects, keep in mind that subsequent projects will require the same or similar skills. Since you certainly don't want to continually repeat fast-track programs, part of your challenge includes preparing for the "real" training program while conducting the accelerated version. You'll make your life easier if you document lessons learned during the fast-track program. You can then use these lessons to identify requirements for your long-term training plan. Step #2: Define your dinosaurs After setting objectives, you must next understand the nature of your dinosaurs. Who are they? Where are they coming from? What do they know? What do they need to know? Most fast-track training participants build applications; they are project leaders, application designers and developers and business analysts. In general, these dinosaurs come from two species: the classic, stereotypical Cobolasaurus Rex and the more recent Dbaseasaurus Novellus. Cobolasaurus Rex, which rose to prominence during the Host-Dominant Cromainframe Era (1963-1984), is an early, unevolved genus. Nowadays, they tend to wander around fat, dumb and happy, doing the same things they've done for 25 years. That's perfect for Year 2000 fixes, but not what you want in your event-driven, object-oriented, client/server Web-computing weenies. They've been on top for so long with so little change required that you may find that some have lost the ability to rapidly evolve. Your first challenge is to get their attention and convince them that, unless they're willing to evolve, the tar pit awaits. (By the way, your Cobolasauruses are undoubtedly killing themselves getting your systems ready for the millennium. What are you doing to prepare them for the millennium, and beyond?) Dbaseasaurus Novellus, a more recent phenomenon, is an extremely dangerous creature. It either evolved from the Cobolasaurus (rare) or (more likely) came to maturity during the PC/LAN Ethernet Erectus Era (1985-1991). Because these creatures have partially evolved, they display attitudes born of their perceived superiority over the Cobolasaurus and nurtured by their absolute conviction that their way is the way. Unfortunately, while they represent a crucial evolutionary phase, they rarely realize that they embody an artifact of an interim step. So your first challenge is to motivate them to continue to evolve. Recent studies indicate increasing evidence of the development of a new species over the past few years. While no single form has yet emerged, these organisms probably represent the next evolutionary step and have tentatively been named Visual Velociraptor. Emerging during the early Visual Basic/PowerBuilder Era, these advanced animals until recently exemplified the evolutionary state-of-the-art. Early experience indicates that most embrace continued evolution, but you should watch out for the occasional laggard. Wherever they come from, your fast-track dinosaur evolution program must quickly transform them into a Webasurus - a screaming eagle prepared to seize competitive advantage via emerging technologies and methodologies in today's Client/Server-OO-Web Era. Under this kind of pressure, you don't have time to conduct a full-scale skills inventory to identify the skills gap. To design the training content you'll have to rely heavily on pilot project experience, vendor recommendations, war-story articles and advice from peers at other organizations who've been there, done that and got the T-shirts (and the scars). However, even a quickie two- or three-day skills inventory of the prospective project team members can prove valuable - if you can get management approval. (Speaking of management, don't forget to include managers in your fast-track planning. Encourage them to participate in the initial, more conceptually oriented steps to give them a clue about the project technology and methodology requirements. Including them will help you to set realistic expectations about staff capability. In addition, make sure critical help-desk and technical support people take the training.) Step #3: Define fast-track strategies The time-critical nature of a fast-track approach mandates your principal strategy: Use the application projects themselves to help the team develop competence in the technology/methodology mix it will use. In other words, learn how to build the house while building the house. Since your goal is to get the project team able to get the job done ASAP, you must emphasize quick-and-dirty techniques, rather than long-term goals such as thoroughness and subject mastery. Minimize formal education/training and maximize informal techniques, especially mentoring.
Step #4: Mentoring Mentoring can have enormous impact in a fast-track scenario. In a mentoring approach, you use more evolved dinosaurs (programmers and project managers skilled in the tools and techniques needed for the project) as role models to guide less-evolved dinosaurs through the next phase of evolution. Because mentoring emphasizes on-the-job training, it frequently provides an ideal fast-track strategy: The mentors help the development team to complete project tasks quickly and with high quality while simultaneously transferring skills. Mentoring success depends on its execution. Most importantly, mentors function as teachers and coaches. Mentors do with, not for. It's OK to use a mentor as a session facilitator, but never use one as a contract programmer or project manager. Ideally, the same resources furnish both training and mentoring to ensure consistency in the techniques taught and used. When selecting mentors, look for stand-up instructors who are also current practitioners of the methods and tools required by your project. Obviously, these people don't grow on trees, so look for them both internally and externally and expect to blend the capabilities of several mentors. If you use outside mentors, and you probably will, expect to pay typical project leader consultant fees - higher than for contract programmers but lower than for management consultants. As with all outside resources, check references thoroughly and follow the old maxim: slow to hire; quick to fire. Managing outside mentors isn't difficult, just different. Avoid having consultants on-site full time. Not only will full-timers tend to provide unnecessary services, but they'll cost a fortune, too. Moreover, full-time help fosters over-dependence that hinders skills transfer. Schedule consultants to visit for one to three days at critical points, such as at project phase kick-off, at mid-phase review/course correction and at phase completion. They should provide assistance to the team, training in the skills required for the next phase and reality checks. Between visits, arrange for quick-response telephone, fax and e-mail support. In general, fast-track programs rely on instructor-led training (ILT), rather than other training delivery methods, for two major reasons: First, ILT fits best with mentoring, especially when the same faculty provides both instruction and coaching. The ILT/mentoring combination makes the passage between training and mentoring seamless so that learning extends naturally beyond the classroom. Second, only ILT currently provides the immediate evaluation and remediation required in a fast-track setting. When you have only one chance to introduce controversial or radical new concepts and need to quickly complete skills transfer, you need to identify problems and take corrective action immediately. Small-group ILT, especially when combined with mentoring, can allow you to quickly attempt multiple teaching methods to match your students' learning styles. Because of tight time frames and because participants will experience stressful project pressures and extreme learning challenges, different management guidelines apply to ILT in a fast-track environment:
Self-study assignments also work well in fast-track programs. Provide off-the-shelf CBT and videotapes, vendor and trade association white papers, magazine articles and standards body publications (from the Object Management Group, for instance) to teach course prerequisites or reinforce course content. Self study is particularly useful for non-controversial topics. Step #5: Take a project manager to lunch Last but not least, fast-track training programs often put you into an extremely close working relationship with the project manager for whose high-priority application you're providing training. You may even find yourself reporting operationally to a project manager. Fear not. Instead, take advantage of this situation by building closer relationships with the project leaders. Show them that training contributes to the project's success when managers bring you into strategic and planning meetings early in the process. When to Fast Track Fast-track programs don't have to arise from an emergency. Read the signals carefully, and you'll be able to plan ahead. Here are a few scenarios that signal the imminent need for a fast-track approach:
Once you've planned a good fast-track strategy, you're sure not to get trampled by the herd. Once they evolve, they might even thank you.
Reprinted from Inside Technology Training June 1997. Copyright © 1997 Ziff-Davis Inc.
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