It’s application training like you’ve never seen it. Consider this: Your manager has sent you to an eight-hour class on writing queries against a database. Most people would consider this a test requiring will power of epic proportions and megadoses of caffeine. Couple that with the fact that corporate training is usually so…corporate, and you are dreading the day.
Applications Trainer Janet Stoner was well aware of this. “When I took over,” she tells her class, “this training was 5 slides in a PowerPoint presentation.” She smiles, “I added my own touch to it.”
Indeed. When trainees to her class get off the elevator, they are greeted by a paper scarecrow pointing in two directions. A sign over his straw head reads “Database Training.” The astute observer notices that there are yellow bricks (cut out of construction paper) leading down a hallway to a training room. Outside the door is a pair of ruby slippers and a sign that says “Bell Out of Order, Please Knock.”
If you haven’t guessed by now, Ms. Stoner has taken a dreadfully dusty topic and tied it to the MGM Classic, “The Wizard of Oz.” After entering and signing in, the trainees sit at a work station containing handouts, a training manual, a report dictionary and a pen with the application’s name, website and support number engraved on its side. Next to that is a bowl full of candy, which, according to Ms. Stoner, helps prevent distraction from the stomach grumbles. Additionally, the trainees can win glitter pens for correct answers or good questions.
The walls have stills of the movie and there are two storyboards in the front of the room. Each section of the storyboard corresponds to a part of the class. Kansas is the overview, Munchkin Land is the fundamentals, the first visit to Oz is the “Things Users Should Know” and the witch’s castle is the data section. “I’m sure the DBAs [Data Base Administrators] love knowing the data is the evil section,” Ms. Stoner jokingly tells her class.
In the morning, the class is treated to the fundamentals of the software tool they will use as well as animated presentations of tornadoes and a house landing (complete with a splat sound effect) on top of a witch. The metaphor is explained: “See what happens when you don’t understand your fundamentals.”
“It makes the class the move,” one of the trainees told me.
The unique training has shown results that even the most hardened of managers appreciate: Calls to the Help Line about basic questions have decreased dramatically since “Oz” has come to Alpharetta. The feedback sheets the trainees fill out about the class have been positive and that word has spread to the other application trainers.
A source system trainer asked her class if they had been to Janet Stoner’s class. A few of the students raised their hands and the trainer said, “I hope you enjoyed it, because nothing flies around in here,” Ms. Stoner related to me over lunch in the Cingular Cafeteria. “It’s nice when your reputation starts getting around to the other systems.”
After lunch, the trainees see a two-minute movie in which the soundtrack from “WOZ” plays, but the words on the screen are not tornados, but training points for the class. Everyone pays attention, anxious to see what will happen next. There’s not long to wait as a brainteaser appears on the screen. “This was really one of the classes I’ve attended,” said a trainee who had flown in from out of town to take the one-day class, “I really enjoyed everything about it.”
Every twenty minutes or so, the lecture and movie portion ends so that the trainees can have some “hand’s on” time doing an exercise. The class is supposed to be fun, but the take-away is that these people will go back to their departments with the skills necessary to run accurate reports. So far, management has been pleased with the results.
At four o’clock, the graduation ceremony begins. Not content to send the class away with only their passwords to the system, Ms. Stoner plays the “Graduation Song” while each student comes forward to receive his or her diploma that awards them the Honorary Degree of Queryologist.
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Copyright © 2002 by Tony Sarrecchia. All rights reserved.
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