Six months ago I was offered what I considered at the time to be the job of my dreams. Training Coordinator for a small, growing, profitable, publicly traded organization. They did not have a training program and were looking to start up an IT training department to help with the growth and changes occurring in the organization. They were in the process of implementing a proprietary software and were scheduled to "Go Live" in 2 1/2 months from the date I started. From the outside all looked great, however, when I started trying to put together trainings for the new software I ran into multiple barriers, from lack of documentation on requirements, incomplete interfaces, and the application simply not working. Somehow it came together and we managed to get everyone trained (with multiple work arounds) and we went live. As soon as we went live there were significant 'issues' which many tried to attribute to training, however, I was relatively successful in demonstrating the difference in training and process/application issues which I hope has maintained the integrity of training within the organization. The problem I am facing right now is that as we are getting some of the problems with the software worked out I feel that we are approaching a time where I need to do a complete 're-train' for everyone – un-train workarounds and bad habits that came up, many that were necessary as end-users struggled to minimize the negative effects of a failed software implementation on their workflow.

I would love to hear from anyone that has experienced a similar situation, how you dealt with it, what approach you used, etc. I don't know if I have run into a road block in my thought process or what, but I'm stuck in how to approach this now and where to even begin to start over so soon when people are very unsure about the application. The end-users I am working with are wonderful! They struggled through our IT nightmare with minimal effects on profits for the last quarter. They put in extra hours and tried to keep a positive attitude, but this situation has put them in a 'just get it done however you have to' frame of mind and we now need to establish our processes with this new software (which still has some issues).

Thank you in advance for any insight you can provide me.

Hello Starbird,
I am also developing and facilitating training programs for a retail point of sale software application. I am interested to here what training methods, mediums you used on the initial round of training. What worked and did not work? Are you going to re-train because the software application has changed or are you looking to reconfigure the training methods you employed?
Fortunately, I was also the requirement developer for this project which has been tremendously helpful in creating the training materials. Good Luck.

Hi Deegs177,

By the time I came into the picture on this project it was perhaps a bit late for doing a full blown training roll out, and with the limitations I ran into with incomplete or unavailable requirements, I ended up doing mostly classroom, hands-on trainings. We actually ended up merging some UAT (User Acceptance Testing) with training which I would not recommend. I put together a 'Master Training' guide which I used to create job aides for Go Live, and I am now using that along with 'new fixes' from IT to create a training web site that we will be able to use in the next couple of months. If I had adequate time, had been involved in requirements development and a perfect set up, I would still do mostly classroom, hands-on trainings, but I would have had better flow and curriculum for those classes. I was fortunate that I was training manager during a very successful software implementation a few years back so I had an idea of what I wanted to do, it just didn't work with all the issues we had. If you have application issues, I strongly recommend holding off on training until they are fixed (we didn't have that luxury, we had to go live by a specific date to remain in compliance). I would take a few 'super users' or what ever you chose to call them, and after things pass your testing procedures, have those users test your training before you bring in the entire staff for training. I found a lot of problems with the software by doing that, and it allowed me and IT to come up with workarounds prior to training the staff (your goal hopefully will not be for workarounds, but to ensure the application and your training are behaving as expected). End users and IT people test the software so differently because they are expecting different things, so I have found in both software roll outs that I have been involved in that watching the end users do their specific job helped me build the training far better than looking at IT's test results.

I have seen software roll outs done with overhead projectors rather than actually having the users perform the tasks on a PC, but I'm a firm believer in hands-on for something like this, even if it's a very simple and user friendly software. If you don't have a classroom or PC's available for the users, it's OK to use a 'see only' method I suppose, but I'd try to get some type of hands-on when you are ready to do your training.

I'm actually doing the re-train because we have a LOT of bad habits that have cropped up with this and there is no consistency in procedures. I believe we have come to a point that IT will be limited in their ability to accurately and quickly assess issues unless we can eliminate the end users as the issue (and hopefully calm some of the tension and rebuild some level of trust between IT and operations).

I manage a training program for a proprietary software application that has been upgraded on a quarterly basis for the last 18 months. (Not Best Practice!) When new features are released, we offer web based distance learning, self paced e-learning, and fresh job aids to highlight these new features. Our strategy has been to organize these tools around specific business procedures covering all of the necessary steps in the application- new & old features.

In addition, the team took some time to sit down with a sample of end users and "shadow" their experience. We scheduled 1 hour appointments where we asked staff to just show us how they used the tools. While the focus was on our team understanding how they use the tool, we usually spent 1/3 of the time answering their questions (How Do I...? Is there a report that would...?) and tried to always leave behind a job aid or some helpful tip. Our notes from this experience helped us identify common "training issues" which we reinforce in ongoing training. We were also able to identify some system enhancements that we handed off to our IT team for consideration in future releases.

Application skill development & user adoption is an ongoing process. In our organization there are certain task that are seasonal and we find that offering timely refreshers is both necessary and welcomed by our users. As staff master basic task, they are more interested in learning about the bells & whistles.

If you initial deployment training was Instructor Led- you may receive push back from management if you suggest "re-training" everyone. It also might not be necessary for all learners to complete the entire training again. Offering short sessions and self paced tools has worked well for our organization. Note: There have been some staff who selected to start over and we have made seats avaiable in New Hire training.

Re: "As soon as we went live there were significant 'issues' which many tried to attribute to training"... I think this is a universal response when a software implementations don't go well. I have had to have those tough conversations too on a routine basis. =)

Gloria,
Thank you for your response. You are most likely right, not everyone will need re-trained on the application as many of the users are very sharp and quick with picking up the new fixes even before we formally get them out. What about procedures though? We don't have any established procedures at this time because of the problems with the rollout. I think it is something that has to be done with operations leading the effort, but I haven't figured out how to approach this. They say they want training now, but I'm not getting the support I need to make it happen (I believe it is more of a lack of faith in the system than desire to train). My approach now (as of Friday) is to let them (operations management) know that there are some things that users are doing that are causing some of the issues that we are logging in ttp (test track pro), so I want to ensure that IT can address the issues from an IT perspective and stop running down who did what that caused the workflow to behave unexpectedly. We are having a LOT of wasted time in IT that I believe at this point can be addressed through training in operations.

Again, thanks for your input!!!