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On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Nordstrom, Kurt <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hey folks, had a topic come up here that seemed relevant to the tenor of this group. Would be interested in hearing if anybody else has approached the same situation, and how they went about it. > > Technology, especially in regards to software development, is a pretty constantly moving target, and there are always new methodologies, tools, practices and models that need to be evaluated and possibly adopted. Or, put another way, developers need to be learning constantly if they're going to stay relevant. > > Unfortunately, in today's economic climate, the prospect of being able to ship your developer team across the country to attend week-long seminars or conferences or what-have-you is not quite as realistic as it once might have been, especially in the academic and library world. > > The obvious solution would seem to be implementing some sort of in-house skills training program to keep developers sharp. Possibly something like a mutual book study with followup reports or presentations, or maybe bringing in an outside presenter. I wonder if any of the groups here have implemented anything along these lines, and how have they gone about it? > > Things that we'd be interesting in knowing, if you've done any sort of in-house training program would be: > > - Topics: What sort of things did you cover? New languages? New technologies? Programming practices? I work at BIREME, a digital library part of PAHO/WHO (Pan-American Health Organization). We've had succesful internal study groups about Python, CouchDB and DSpace. > - Method: What did you use? Books? On-line courses? Videos? Hired speakers? We used books and each group was led by one or more developers of our staff who were studying the technology in question on their own before the group was formed. > - Budget: Did you have one? What were the costs involved? Only the time of the participants. > - Time: How much time did you allocate to training? Were you able to provide study time for those involved in the training? Our study groups had between 6 and 12 sessions, lasting 2 hours each. Participants were supposed to read material and do exercises between sessions. Some didn't. Those who did, did very well. The group sessions and a mailing list were useful to help those who got stuck doing exercises or trying to apply the technology in new test projects while the study group was ongoing. > - Evaluation methods: How did you evaluate the effectiveness of the training? Did those involved give reports? Did you do any sort of coding reviews? From 1/3 to 1/2 of all participants effectively started using the studied technology for real tasks within 2 months. > - Results: Was it worth it? Would you do it again? Yes. Python and CouchDB have since become established technologies here, and those who did not take full advantage of the study groups are now playing catch up. To increase the chance of everyone actually reading the material each week we want to try "shotgun seminars" [1] [1] http://www.teachingcollegeenglish.com/2008/02/17/shotgun-seminars/ > We'd love to hear from any and all of those out there who have implemented (or attempted to implement) something along these lines. -- Luciano Ramalho programador repentista || stand-up programmer Twitter: @luciano