TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
>the first things you need to define are (in no particular order):
>* when does the training program need to be in place? OR
* is there a date that someone (your boss?) has in mind by which a metric
can be established regarding the program? (Something like, "Yes, we have a
training program," or "X% of our people have been trained in Y methods.")
* is there any type of budget that you have (or will have) accountability
for in this regard?
Yes, these are important questions. I'd include them in the training needs
analysis. When the training needs to be completed is not only an input into
the decisions on delivery methods, but also development. For example, if
there's a big rush, you might need to develop several stages of training,
with only the most pressing material being covered in stage one.
Regarding budget, the needs analysis should give you what you need to do a
first extrapolation. For example, let's say there are 500 people to train,
and it looks like we need one day duration. From the one day, I know that it
will take about 25-30 days of development for classroom training. From the
number of students I can calculate the number of instructors, sets of
materials, network setup needed, etc. - and of course, this is partly a
function of the implementation schedule. You can then take the numbers to
your executive and say "here's what I need" and show why. If the required
budget isn't available, you can then consider the options together, such as
reducing the duration, spreading out the schedule so you can stay in-house
instead of renting facilities, etc. In some organizations, training budgets
come from the affected departments, while in others it comes from the
training department, and in some cases (such as implementation of a new
system) it comes from the budget for that overall project.
Have you tried the latest in Help Authoring from RoboHelp?
Try ROBOHELP X5 for Free - Now with Word 2003 support, Content
Management, Multi-Author support, PDF and XML support and much more!
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
