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Training Best Practices/Transforming a Training Organization into a Performance Organization

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Driving factors that pushed Microsoft to transform its technical training group

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Microsoft needed to adapt to a maturing software market where quality and value were more important than a proliferation of new features.

The PC software market has matured over the last decade. The market has broadened, as has the role of software in people’s everyday lives. Instead of a market dominated by technically savvy customers, the market is now dominated by business professionals and novice home users. At the same time, Open Source software has been competing against commercial software in key markets.

Microsoft determined that higher quality, lower total cost of ownership (TCO), and better integration were the ways to compete with Open Source. In addition, the rise of high-speed Internet access left customers vulnerable to a variety of malicious software. Mission-critical business applications and family communication and entertainment applications must continue to run flawlessly and safely within this environment. Thus, Microsoft had to change the way its software was engineered to focus on security, reliability, privacy, and customer value.

Initially, Microsoft focused on fixing the products themselves by stopping all development and reviewing every line of code for quality issues. Every engineer was trained in what to look for and how to fix it. However, this was not a sustainable approach if the company was to continue to innovate and create new value for customers. Microsoft needed a more comprehensive and balanced strategy.

Executive leadership sought expertise from outside the company to repurpose the training organization as a performance support organization that could drive engineering improvement across the company.

Critical steps that enabled a successful transition

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  • Received strong executive sponsorship from the highest levels.
  • Hired an experienced Human Performance Technology (HPT) professional to lead and transform the training organization.
  • Repurposed and trained senior engineers from each discipline as performance consultants.
  • Established engineering governance bodies for all engineering disciplines.
  • Mapped out three-year performance improvement plans for each engineering discipline.
  • Received support from governance bodies for the plans and began implementation.
  • Built 60 percent of the HPT infrastructure.
  • Started a three-year project to build comprehensive career models for all disciplines.
  • Demonstrated value and improvement to the corporation the first two years.

Detailed results from the first two years

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  • Achieved executive sponsorship across all divisions for our three-year plans within a year.
  • Consolidated divergent improvement initiatives across all divisions within a year.
  • Moved to a six-month rolling calendar within a year.
  • Re-defined our discipline curricula within a year.
  • Rolled out new engineering career models for principle disciplines within 18 months.
  • Doubled the engineering awards program and event in size within 18 months.
  • Defined and approved new product life cycle framework by all divisions within 18 months.
  • Increased global training deliveries by 650 percent.
  • Rated # 38 in Training Magazine’s Top 100 our first year, and # 23 in our second year.

Key learnings from the transition, good and bad

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  • Transforming the organization starts at the top and works its way down.
  • Repurposing senior engineers as performance consultants provides a huge head start in analysis.
  • Establishing a three-year planning process lends credibility and space to work.
  • Creating governance and the rest of the system infrastructure cannot be underestimated.
  • We should have focused more on operations earlier so they were ready when our plans ramped up.

Plans for the next few years

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  • Complete the HPT infrastructure to drive analysis, interventions, and evaluation.
  • Complete the career models for remaining engineering disciplines.
  • Complete the discipline curricula.
  • Establish a sustainable, continuous improvement model.
  • Rotate senior engineers back into the engineering groups to drive change, and out of the engineering groups to provide fresh perspective and continue improvement.
  • Put broad and strong evaluation and analysis systems in place to streamline and validate the planning process and return on investment (ROI) data.
  • Upgrade and integrate a new Learning Management System (LMS).
  • Establish a cadence for curriculum updates and scheduling.
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