How did you Implement Training

[dwilliams]

Curious what others have done to implement PDMLink and ProjectLink training into their enterprise. We recently issued a survey to our users and training was identified as an area needing the most improvement. With our move from 8.0 to 9.1, we realize that we need to get control of our training quickly.

Where do the users go to access your training?
What training tools did you use?
Did you build training specific to your enterprise or did you use the OOTB training (Learn, Help, etc.)?
How often do you train?
What training methods have been the most successful?
Do you have a training group in your enterprise?
Did you pay an outside company to develop your training?
Anyone using PTC University?
Any other feedback?

I appreciate your time,
Dax

[mespinosa]

Dax,

Do you have a good understanding of your user community? Have the WC users be broken down into different groups, depending on their roles and access they have to the functionality in WC PDMLink and ProjectLink? If you have already done this great, if not suggest to perform this analysis.

Also, have your current business and engineering processes already been reviewed and changed to use any of the new WC functionality in WC 9.1? If yes, great, if no, suggest your organization look into this before creating training material.

Once you have these grouping and have processes defined, you will be able to identify the training material requirements for each of these groups. The most effective training material for users is training material using business data and scenarios the WC users use to perform their work in PDMLink and ProjectLink. Here we are speaking about custom training material, which takes time and budget to create, but we have found this to be the most effective means to train users how to perform their work in Windchill.

In conjunction with this custom training material, suggest you use OOTB training to supplement this training to teach users how to search for their data in PDMLink and ProjectLink, and how to interact with WC functionality, such as discussions, assignments, and user preferences. You do not want to re-create the “Wheel”, so I would not recommend you create any custom training material to teach OOTB WC functionality.

My current organization used this methodology to create custom training material for DELL, BOEING and other customers.

[MikeLockwood]

Hi Dax,
Big subject - lots of potential answers.


* Before we migrated from Intralink 3.x we had auditorium and hands-on classes for all, but not a lot (maybe 2 hours for most users; 8 hours for Pro/E users).

* Since then we've invested a huge amount in preparing brief how-to documents, best practices, guidelines, etc. and have made them available to users but have not had much formal training. This has worked well for most - but some users really need a classroom situation.

* We continue to provide a lot of formal training for Pro/E users.

* We've chosen to prepare and deliver all training in-house, using our own materials, specific to our lifecycle, versioning, product and library context names, group names & permissions, Pro/E drawing formats and templates, attributes applied to WTParts, various document sub-types etc.

* We keep all training materials as WT Doc's inside a Library in production Windchill, with links to these documents from workflow assignment instructions, and also from the home page in Pro/E. This Library has a simple two-state lifecycle such that only a few users can see these documents while they are being prepared / updated and the general population can see them once Set State is used to the second state.

* We added a link at the top of every page to a simple cascading help links UI.

* We maintain one subscription to PTC University and thoroughly go thru this info. It's been ok but very simplistic and only scratches the surface of what is needed. Our change management and work request processes are very, very different from OTB, and our two-phase Revisioning / Lifecycle are also very different, as well as our attributes, etc. so the standard PTC U stuff doesn't seem very familiar to users.

* We also have tried hard to have "local go-to experts" in every physical area of the facilities as well as for each functional area - and attempt to do a lot of "train the trainer."

* Just another note: We survey users often and find that most prefer that we just respond to questions and requests for clarification in general rather than having formal training.

* One thing we haven't done much of but intend to start is cataloging user questions, etc. into FAQ's for example.

[HugoHermans]

Hi Mike,

Very interesting, and roughly the same over here.

Do you, or did you consider a wiki? Where users can add there
experiences, bet practices, questions?

Met vriendelijke groeten,
Kindest regards,

Hugo Hermans

-

NV Michel Van de Wiele
Michel Vandewielestraat 7
8510 Kortrijk (Marke)
Tel : +32 56 243 211
Fax: +32 56 243 540
BTW BE 0405 450 595
RPR Kortrijk

[MikeLockwood]

Yes, agree, much better to approach as a wiki. Need to do this.

[dwilliams]

Hi guys,
Thank you for sharing your experience.

Based on the responses I received, it appears that most are using customized training because the OOTB material is too generic or has content that is not used in your enterprise.

With 9.1, the UI is completely different from 8.0. How do you handle the UI differences in your training material? Do you rebuild the trainings with every upgrade or is there an easier way to structure the material?

Thanks for your time,
Dax

From: Christophe Laudou [
Once migration was done, we move some users per site into the group so they could access the training product only

Went through a Best Practice / Formal document that we had established for them.

Once they had finished move the user into their production groups. etc...

But we have found users only pay ...

[mdebower]

I have done a lot of the same things Mike mentions in his post, but have not done anything with a Wiki.

So what Wiki software do you reccommend?

What should I do to get started using Wiki's?

-marc

[jkent]

Here is a place to start

[jer3d1]

To chime in on Wikis...

I have rolled out a few wiki resources in different areas of our company with mixed results. The largest factor we have faced with the wiki concept has not been the tool itself, rather it has been the culture shift that goes along with it. To encourage the technology, my next rollout will include an appropriate adoption strategy. There are many resources available by searching for topics such as 'organizational wiki adoption' in google.


All the best,
Jered

Wouldn't it be great to see a wiki in the PTC User site?

[ddemay]

A wikipedia like interface for technical solutions might be a more elegant central interface for those who desire to share solutions.


Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

[rmp.pe]

I agree with all that the PTC/U training is too generic. People don't want to know "how to check in a document", they want to know how to use the system to to their jobs. That's where the use cases and examples come in. When we did our initial 7.0 deployment, we used PTC/U for the Pro/E functionality training only, and developed custom training on the concepts of PLM (i.e. what is a lifecycle), the change process and use cases. The custom training was provided in an instructor led environment. It was a lot of work, and we found that many of the users just didn't get it and required retraining a few times. One of the biggest complaints with that training was that they wanted "hands on" training so they could actually try it in the system, not just sit and watch a powerpoint. Hands-on training is time-consuming to manage however... you have to have a training environment available, and you need to have data available for people to test with. Then you need to refresh that data or the environment between training sessions so that the next group can run through the same activities the previous group did.

We recorded some of the sessions so that they would be available to new users who were hired into the company later on. That worked ok.

For our upgrade from 7.0 to 9.1, we conducted "delta" training for the existing users. We have a corporate training group, but they just helped us to coordinate and plan, they didn't actually deliver the training. We identified SMEs for various subject areas, and they developed the training materials and then delivered the classes. The "delta" focused on the differences between how you did something in 7.0 and how you now do it in 9.1... no need to retrain on the basics. That appeared to work well. Now we are looking at deploying more sites with brand new users, and will have to undertake the whole process of a full training program again. PTC had proposed to customize some of their PTC/U classes to be specific to our processes. This sounds good, but the management here is of the opinion that they will still involve SME time since they need to learn our processes, and this is not cheap to do.

As for the wiki, I think it is a great idea in concept, but I question how effective it will be in practice. We created a sharepoint site dedicated to Windchill support and training where we made available the recorded training sessions, cheat sheets on particular functionality, a FAQ list, and areas where users could ask questions, discuss functionality or . While users go there occasionally for a cheat sheet, we find that this site is rarely used, and not a single user has contributed any content. I suppose it may be a function of the culture of your organization, but that approach here has been relatively unsuccessful.

Regards,

Robert M. Priest, PE, PMP
Engineering Manager
STERIS Corporation

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http://www.steris.com

[mdebower]

I have to agree iwth you Robert about user involvement. In my experience, at a couple of different companies, most users don't have the time or inclination to add to the content. Perhaps they feel that it is "not their job".

After looking at several different Wiki's, I think that I am going to leave the best practice guides and training material in Windchill in a specific library set up for the materials. I don't think a wiki gives me any additional capability that I will take advantage of over Windchill.

Plus that way we are "eating our own dogfood" so to speak. *woof*

-marc

[SteveVinyard]

I have done an extensive amount of training for various customers and I definitely share your challenges. When it comes to training a large group of people, getting them in one room (with computers...we have a large inventory of laptops we use for training to make it easy) with time freed up is critical to success; however, follow up training can be done in a different, more efficient method.

Conference Room Training

1- Using official PTC materials, slides and exercises (or develop your own)

a. Its critical to educate users, demo what you are doing and then have them use the tool using some simple exercises.

2- Projects

a. In my mind this is really where the rubber meets the road. Users have previously (step 1) done a small set of exercises that are very well laid out...hence they follow the bouncing ball and everything is easy.

b. After they have done this they need to have a series of small projects (create new CAD docs, check them in to a personal folder, promote objects etc).

i. I tend to make these simple at first and then continually add to them moving forward where they still have to rely on the previous project as well

c. Make them do common tasks more than once via several different small projects. They be will fuzzy on the harder stuff but solid on basics and navigating around

d. Check their projects, accountability is huge for learning

3- Test the users, not an exam but continually challenge them to keep them engaged

Follow up training

1- I use a web based meeting tool for follow up training over a couple of hours (GoToMeeting works well)

2- Get all the users on one GoToMeeting session and have them all submit questions concerns

3- Demo a few solutions and best practices on your own screen

4- Show the screen of users that have issues, have them show the problem via GoToMeeting so all users can see, then then take control of their mouse and show how to avoid or solve the issue and then move on to the next user.

a. This is a really powerful way to quickly and easily educate users with issues while showing everyone on the team at the same time. I usually do this after the users have been on the system for a while and have questions and concerns.