Technical Training Overload? Maybe so...


You see, these past months, I have been assigned to handle technical trainings a whole lot more than Professional Development ones - my week would normally consist of either Testing-related courses (of which there are at least four (4) different trainings around it; Application Analysis (one of my favorites), Application Design & Detailed Design - two separate courses that I have recently been conducting, though I am not fully comfortable handling alone, and Project Management - technically speaking those could be three courses, though one is actually a cut version of the other (which actually makes it harder to conduct for having lesser buffer time to work with). Toss in Team Lead School on occasion and you get the near complete list of such technical trainings I handle (usually with a partner) in Accenture.

These courses cover almost the whole Systems/software development life cycle of your usual custom development - and yes, i sometimes am asked to delve into the design school for packaged applications as well... another conduct I am not too familiar with due to it's delving in SAP, an application I have little knowledge about... but with my partners either being Gina or Fiel, I get to make do with these conducts too.

Of my monthly schedule, I would be lucky to have a Professional Development course conduct - say, once every two weeks. Because of this, you could say that this has made me look forward to such trainings, since I tend to miss conducting them. The simple matter is that they are easier to handle, more personal and allow a stronger connection with the participants - not that we don't achieve a similar connection with the technical courses... but at the end of the day the Professional development trainings are less logically rigorous - thus, less difficult to get across. It is for these same reasons that I find the Technical courses more tiring (thank goodness for having a partner to conduct them with), while the Professional Development courses could be done by me alone and I would feel less drained... maybe because I really do enjoy them more.

At the end of the day, however, it is these Technical courses that have made me more or less, a regular fixture in Accenture this year - and have given me some comfort in terms of being able to 'bring home the bacon', so as you can see, I won't really complain about them. I guess it can be seen as a testament of sorts to my capabilities, that I can be equally home in either type of conduct. It has been that way since my I/ACT days... it still continues to help me now.

Still, I do look forward to these soft-skills trainings... if for anything else, they give me a break form all the technical conducts. If there is any silver lining to my current situation, I stay relevant in the I.T. business - heck, maybe even more so than I started out a few years ago. After all, back then I had some cursory knowledge of Testing principles - but my knowledge back then is incomparable to what I can teach about the topic now. So yeah... when viewed that way, I could say I am improving and am not stagnant.

Looking forward... it seems that Fiel and I will be launching the new version of the company's Application Analysis - a five (5) day conduct, as compared to the older three (3) day course. Embedded here will be the newer versions of their methodology - which houses their best practices. So once again, we learn newer stuff before most of their staff - both local and global it seems. Based on this pilot, possible adjustments for improvements will be considered.

Imagine that...