Review our training articles
ROI of An Instructor-Led Training
Few days after teaching an Informatica boot camp, I received an email from one of the students:
"I just wanted to thank you for the class last week. You did a great job tailoring the class to our level of expertise; I learned A LOT of stuff that I should have known a year ago when I first started using Informatica. Would you like me to email somebody about my experience? This boot camp deserve to be recognized" What makes this email so interesting is that this person attended the boot camp with one year’s worth of solid experience on the product – as a developer and administrator. He attended my class because he wanted to get a jump start on the new features in version 8.1 so his upgrade from version 7 would go smoothly. He was surprised to learn of the many standard features and techniques common to version 7. Features, that would have benefited him greatly had he known about them prior to the class."
This is not an isolated case, as a matter of fact, this is quite common. Most students with some prior experience with tools discover a wealth of features in their current version. This is easy to understand; most users of Microsoft word only utilize five percent of the features available which must be sufficient to produce. But when someone struggles through an ETL process every day to meet a shrinking load window for a mission critical business intelligence solution, this "struggle" starts costing companies real dollars!
We have been training users on Informatica 1998. Our instructors have years of real-world experience having worked in many different business environments. This wealth of experience makes every class uniquely different, the dynamic/interactive nature of our training methodology, and depth of hands-on labs cannot be matched by books and learn-it-on-your-own approach. We have the technical bandwidth and front line experience with the tool and technology to drill up or down the knowledge spectrum to make sure the boot camp attendees walk away armed with many techniques that may be very hard to extract out of 3000-plus pages of documentation.
Management should recognize the need to train their technical staff. Expecting technical staff to "pick up" the product on their own may come back to haunt them later. Poor techniques and not enough understanding of the products’ internal functions will lead to poorly designed mappings that can and will jeopardize their projects and waste time and money.
The best defense is a good offense. Sending your technical staff to training before embarking on a project is the best way to kick-off a project and ensure your investment will pay off.
-----------------------------------
I learned more than the software
Classroom based training is still by far the most effective way to learn a new software paradigm. The advantage over CBT (Computer Based Training) and POYO (Pick-it-up On Your Own) is that there is a momentum/dynamic a good instructor introduces into the classroom that a CBT & POYO simply cannot match.
There are exceptions of course, but the best investment businesses can make is to have employees trained in a “Great” classroom setting first, then augmenting and continuing their education the CBT and POYO way.
For a classroom setting, the keyword is “Great”, nothing else will do. A “Great classroom setting” is a not a function of how ergonomic the place is; it is not about how graphic intensive the presentation material is. Although, these are good features to have, a “great” class is a direct function of the instructor that control the rhythm and tempo of the class:
1. Great comfort level with the subject
2. Excellent communicator (keeps a dry subject material interesting)
3. Interactive environment – Actively engaging attendees and avoiding the “dozing off” syndrome
4. Flexible (able to address any questions/tangents that come up during class)
5. Challenges students
6. Loves and enjoys training (Can’t say enough about that)
However hard the work that goes into creating a thorough and compelling training material on Informatica Solutions, the challenge remains in keeping a technical class interesting. The magic is always found during the delivery and the interaction in the classroom setting. Especially when, we share real life examples of situations, problems and solutions. This is when comments like “ I learned more than the software” are truly gratifying.
Speaking strictly as an educator, I take great pains in assuring educational value to each student. When having students in a class that are more advanced than the rest, I endeavor to provide them with additional labs to work on which they no doubt find challenging and rewarding.
Dealing with a technical subject such as data and the likes, the ultimate gratification an educator, like myself, aims for, is a positive evaluation from each of his students. At times, I receive what borders on the humorous while packing quite the back-handed compliment. Here is an example from last year; “ First class I had in which I have not fallen asleep. The exercises were a bit too challenging. I like lectures first then exercises next.”
