Even when budgets are tight, it's important to maintain and extend skills within your organisation. If your formal training budget is small or nonexistent, an in-house training plan may be the answer. Although an in-house plan takes work, it can pay off in the long run. Follow these guidelines to present a clear case for funding a training project inside your organisation. Key questions to answer before asking for training funds:
Is the training going to cause political problems?
Senior management may be reluctant to authorise such training, saying, in essence, "We pay these people enough; what extra skills do they require?" That's why you need to ensure that you have the backing of at least one executive who views your proposed training as beneficial. This will only happen if you can present a clear case with objectives for undertaking this work. What is the format of the training? Will you run a mini lecture course? Be careful, this type of training may be ineffective if the training is intended as preparation for an urgent project. After designing and running several of these types of courses, I've found that people only learn if they can also do relevant hands-on work. Since I've put together an in-house online training tool from scratch, I can vouch for the fact that a lot of effort is required. However, my hard work will continue to pay off down the line: The extensible tool makes it easy for others to quickly insert new content. I also made it available across an intranet to select subsets of staff for future use. Is your team motivated by the idea? Does the idea of being in a classroom for a couple of days interest your team members? It's your responsibility to help them understand that the training is necessary for the project. A good way to get your team members excited about the concept is to give them credit for their effort, possibly by giving them recognition within the organisation. Also, look into the possibility of linking this work to some form of external accreditation. Once the training begins, ensure the material stays relevant to the forthcoming project work. And, of course, don't forget to keep the troops happy with the usual coffee, pizza, etc. What's the best way to organise in-house training? Do you really have to design the training material from scratch, or can a cheaper/better way be found within your organization to achieve the same result? Try to make any material you create reusable. It's generally a good idea to teach the minimum fundamentals your people need and then give scope for them to pick up the details and extras from background sources that you will provide. If it's a classroom-based course, meet where there will be limited distractions. Try to ensure that team members will be able to fit the course into their work schedule without causing a disruption. Also, make sure the sessions aren't too long, since people usually have limited concentration spans for learning new material. You might try teaching by percolation, where only a few individuals sit in on the course and then they provide on-the-job training for the other team members. Do try and make use of your knowledge of the individuals in your team as much as possible. There's not much point to expect an introverted, monosyllabic code guru to communicate easily with a pack of knowledge-hungry, noisy neophytes. Decide whether you're the best person to deliver the content. If you aren't, you may want an in-house professional trainer to take the lead. Just make sure the trainer is sufficiently smart and a good communicator (sometimes these are mutually exclusive). Should team members be tested? It definitely focuses team members' attention when they know they'll be tested on the material. However, in my experience, internal exams really annoy employees unless there's chance they'll gain recognition for their efforts. I prefer to assess how much they learn while actually doing the target project. I find it helps team morale if the training process isn't set up to identify geniuses and dunces. Don't forget to ask your people for feedback about the course via questionnaire. If you treat the entire exercise as a small-scale preproject, your toolbox of project management skills will prove invaluable. Created by developers, for developers, Builder.com brings software developers fresh, real-world perspective on topics from programming to architecture to management. Builder.com will improve the way developers work with the information, tools, and services to help them conquer the challenges they face everyday in real-world development.
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