How much is too much, how much is not enough? That is the proverbial question. Often times when project budgets are being developed, training is a secondary consideration. Sometimes it’s not considered at all. When you’re working with customers helping them to determine what kinds of training and how much should be included, the first thing should be clearly identifying what your objectives are (and qualifying them with the most affected stakeholder – the end users). At times you will find the answer to that question to be very different coming from the project sponsor vs. the End User management team, vs. the End Users themselves. Your ‘objectives’ often transcend the simple task of selecting classes. Hence, the need to clarify with all of your stakeholders…
First, who are your stakeholders in training? The End Users are obvious. What about Team Leads? IT Support (i.e. desktop support, server support, and help desk)? Application Support (administrative and end user)? Change Management teams? What about your Project Sponsor? The list can go on and on. How much is too much, how much is not enough?
Second, what are your budgetary constraints? Within your project budget, you may have a line item for training, or even a separate line item for training for different phases of the project. This is the money originally allocated by the sponsor. How that money is spent may be rigidly defined, or it may be simply a line item budget number to be used at your discretion. With a little probing, you may be able to determine that ‘other monies’ are available from different budget codes or cost centers (unrelated to the project) that can also be used in a discretionary manner by the department managers. In those cases, with a well thought out justification, you may be able to pool that money in addition to what’s been allocated to the project to increase your available funding for training. In the case where you have line items for training for different phases of the project, close examination and analysis may reveal that there is an imbalance in the amounts allocated for some areas. Understanding that demographic need and the spread can help you level the available funds in other areas or phases of the project where you are deficient in the amount of money needed to support those particular initiatives. How much is too much, how much is not enough?
Third, what are your logistics and operational contraints? Training requires time and resources. Staff time, training rooms, systems\application environments, etc… To train people, the traditional model involves taking them out of their work environment, putting them into a classroom, and running them through a curriculum based program that will orient them to the new systems and sometimes to the specific processes or application used in their jobs. Point being you are taking people away from their jobs which directly impacts the organizations ability to do business. How do you compensate for that from an operations perspective? Do you need to compensate for that from an operations perspective? When you’re trying to implement training in large organizations, these challenges become even more daunting. How much is too much, how much is not enough?
Fourth, what are your timelines? The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry… I’m not sure that when Robert Burns penned that famous quote, he wasn’t thinking about project planning, schedules and interdependencies, but he could have been! You can develop the most comprenhensive training plan possible, taking into consideration every possible need. Then you start to consider the functional dependencies required to pull that off (i.e. availability of systems, availability of facilities, etc…), the personell logistics (availability of staff, availability of trainers, availability of technical support, etc…), and the human factor (how much time will elapse between training, testing and GOLIVE when people will have to use the system) and you start to realize that you have created a monster. How much is too much, how much is not enough?
Now, how does this all play out in the context of your objectives?
Stakeholders – You have to address all of them. You don’t necessarily have to deliver to all of them. As quickly as possible assess what their critical functional needs and requirements are in relation to training. Be careful to note the difference between ‘nice-to-haves’ and ‘must-haves’.
Budgetary Constraints – Make a short list of the ideal classes and training Deliverables you would provide in a best case scenario. Ball park cost it and compare to your ‘nice-tohave’ and ‘must-have’ lists from your stakeholders. Identify the gap if one exists. Prioritize the stakeholders in the context of functionally (and successfully) completing the project.
Logistics and Operational Constraints – Now review your operational capability and capacity for delivering the training. Do you have the required classrooms, computing resources and the application environment to deliver to the volume of people that need to be trained. Even if all of those people can be spared from their jobs for the time it will take to train them, is it really necessary to pull all of them to accomplish your functional objectives?
Project Timelines – Now that you’ve considered your stakeholders requirements, budgetary constraints, logistics and operational constraints, consider your overall project timelines. Will your systems be online and functional in the appropriate time frame to be used for training. Will tapping these systems for training impact other scheduled activities (i.e. development, system integration testing, user acceptance testing, etc…)? Can training be combined with other scheduled project activities in ways that create synergy and efficiencies in overall project execution? How much time will elapse between training and when you will count on users to participate in testing and actually take the system live?
Conclusions
- The blue sky approach is that everyone will want training and as much as they can get. The reality is that you will almost never have the budget, available resources or the time for that, even if you can tap those outside-of-the-project discretionary departmental budgets. It’s up to you to ascertain what is really required to successfully launch. Typically it’s the end users, and some mix of application administration\desktop support. This is where you engage the Project Sponsor and potentially the clients Project Director to help set expectations with the various stakeholders on what will be delivered. This is also where Change Management comes in. Help the client to understand the need that change management addresses, and suggest creative ways that change management techniques can help to address the training of future hires and the additional training of people not included in the formal project training.
- As an alternative to training everyone, consider ‘organic approaches’ that leverage departmental super users for propagating training within their departments. This approach done properly can also yield a secondary benefit of producing ‘product evangelists’ within the department that will culturally promote the use of the system from within. The production of computer based training (CBT’s) for training of the masses can also be a very cost effective alternative when largely repeatable tasks come into play. These can be produced much more cost effectively with current productivity tools than could be done even 3 to 5 years ago.
- However you deliver your training, it will be more effective if it is delivered just prior to when users will be required to use the system. Typically this should be just before test, and then test should be immediately followed by the launch so that users are using the system while the skills and concepts developed in training are still fresh in their minds.
How much is too much, how much is not enough?
The short answer is that more is not always better. Users need to be able to do their jobs, nothing more, nothing less. We want to deliver the best solution, but we have to remain focused on our core objectives. If informal training with ‘Cheat Sheets’ at the users desktop is sufficient, go there. If it requires multiple language translations of End User Manuals and CBT’s with customized voice overs, go there. It’s about the right solution in the right place for the right people at the right time. It’s your job to understand and articulate what ‘right’ is.
Gene Eckhart
Program Manager
ImageSource, Inc.
