InformationWeek

June 8, 1998

Train At The Speed Of Change

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Illustration by John Bleck

One project now under way at the U.S. Navy's weapons support facility is retraining mainframe Cobol programmers to meld Corba technology with distributed computing environment (DCE) into a new distributed system. Tzerefos turned to the technology vendors, such as Corba component vendor I-Kinetics Inc., for training. The reason is that few, if any, outside training facilities offer Corba, DCE, and mainframe data connectivity curricula.

"We hand-picked vendors who are pro viding the technologies, and they're going to provide the classroom training because we can't find it elsewhere," Tzerefos says. "We've put together five-week courses, two nights a week, 3-1/2 hours a night, and that's the same 35 hours you get in a crash course. But this is the way to learn it. It's the difference between jamming 35 hours into five days, or taking a college course."

Multidisciplined Approach
For large organizations trying to cope with a rapidly changing technological landscape, the training requirements border on the outrageous, and no single solution addresses all needs. Geographically dispersed organizations are being smothered by the skills gap. But some IT shops use interactive multimedia conferencing technologies to synthesize multiple methodologies into a single training answer.

"We deploy new technologies rapidly, and the demand for training is phenomenal," says Don Blehm, training manager for AT&T's network operations and engineering. "We were struggling to keep up with training 4,000 technicians who were going to touch our newest equipment and technologies."

To meet the need, AT&T had 15 instructors teaching courses 16 hours a day over two shifts, with 10 of them crisscrossing the country, trying to transfer knowledge to all 4,000 people. The effort was slipping. Costs were staggering and it was tough to retain top training talent. "You can imagine the travel expenses and trying to find people who were willing to stay on the road as much as 12 weeks at a time," Blehm says.

After a successful pilot at 20 sites, AT&T has since rolled out a satellite-based interactive multimedia training network to 270 sites nationwide. The instructor-controlled system uses software and hardware from One Touch Systems Inc. The network delivers enterprisewide, satellite-equipped classrooms to desktop or browser-based PCs. The proprietary interactive broadcast technology lets instructors communicate and collaborate in real time with students at locations anywhe re in the world.

The system, with pricing starting at $15,000 per server, plus client licenses, doesn't come cheap. But AT&T officials say it quickly paid for itself by virtually eliminating the company's troublesome training logjam.

"What we have been able to gain through broadcast learning is a dramatic reduction in the time to proficiency," Blehm says. "Where it took maybe two years to get around the country and train all these people, we now typically will have 150 to 200 students per broadcast. We can now train the entire employee pool very quickly, regardless of how complicated the technology is."

To keep pace in today's hyperaccelerated business environment, experts say IT leaders should look to raise training's profile from that of a necessary evil to a cornerstone of application development, deployment, and maintenance efforts.

"If you take the average person going to work for a Fortune 1,000 company, in many instances their training consists of being handed printe d notes and 'call us if you have any problems,'" says Thomas Mitchell, technical specialist with the intranet technology group, software development services at Sprint. "The lack of training is the stuff of legend. In the long run, it's cost-inefficient. Invest in the proper training facilities now."

Loyola University's Nezlek agrees, and urges IT shops to take control of their educational destinies. "Organizations have to stop blaming the IT hiring crisis, and start taking responsibility for their own training needs," Nezlek says. "You can dramatically cut support costs, improve software quality, reduce development cycles, and retain your top talent by keeping their skills current. Any way you slice it, an investment in training is a win for your people and your business."