Flexible responses on flexible terms

The IT project is limping behind the schedule, the budget has to be revisited, and in the last minute new requirements are formulated or entire modules pushed into the next phase. "These situations aren’t the exception, but rather the rule," according to Nigel Warren of TTS Knowledge Solutions, London. "IT training must be flexible enough to deal with such situations." He has summarized the stumbling blocks that you should look out for, and how to avoid them, in his white paper "The Seven Deadly Sins of IT Training".

These include, for example, training the target community too far in advance because by the time the system goes live, the trainees will have forgotten much of what they learned. "On top of this, it can’t take account of all the project updates," says Warren. Alongside inflexible planning and training that is too early or too comprehensive, he warns against out-of-date material, neglect of process knowledge, and lack of ownership.

eLearning adapts to every update

In his white paper, Warren recommends being careful with resources, in particular with regard to the technical environment. "A good tool enables simple, fast, and flexible creation of eLearning material," he says. Learning itself must also be efficient. "You should reduce the scope of formal knowledge transfer and instead put in place needs-oriented user support that provides learning content in bite-sized chunks." He is very much in favour of on-demand learning directly at the workplace. "Such a training model can respond flexibly even when there are last-minute changes to the project."

In order to exploit all of the advantages of workplace and context-oriented training, clearly defined responsibilities are required, as is an intensive maintenance of the materials. "Training strategies and schemes should also be integrated into process optimisation."