Case Studies

Training

The Challenge

A national data security organization wanted to develop training material and user documentation in support of an enterprise wide operational software application due to be deployed in less than 90 days across the United States.

Strategically, the new software was engineered to 1) provide a competitive advantage in the market place; 2) support the consolidation of best of breed feature sets from a variety of like software applications within the enterprise, and 3) solidify, enhance and bring consistency to varied business processes currently practiced within the enterprise.

An internal training and documentation effort was in process but consistently missed milestones because of deficiencies in strategy and approach, limited business and systems knowledge, and weaknesses in material content and context.

The Opportunity

Program management requested the services of Raining Virtue Solutions to manage this effort. As part of the request, management communicated the urgency of hitting already established deadlines. To be successful, project management asked us to work backwards from communicated dates.

For effective software deployment and organizational acceptance, the new software required a strategic, timely and effective approach for communicating the value and practical benefits of the new software. First impressions are critical and the result of this effort would in fact be the first impression.

We started behind and were asked to do what was necessary to catch up. Understanding this charter we were able to quickly establish expectations and effectively communicate the strategy we would use in successfully completing the project.

The Solution

Our team met the training objectives in a timely manner because the strategy focused on the three areas below.

Project Planning – With input from project management, business analysts, systems analysts and instructional designers, the team strategically defined training and user documentation requirements and established reasonable timelines for project deliverables.

Curriculum Based Workshops – Immediately following approval of the project plan the project team facilitated and drove workshop sessions. Each workshop session included a business and systems representative with subject matter expertise.

Single Source – Develop subject matter specific material that could be leveraged in support of training, user help and documentation. Ensure material is in a location and format accessible across the enterprise.