End User Training on an Agile Project

[jmeyer....@ivey.ca]

Hi,

I am on a project at client that is using agile (or iterative)
development for the first time. I am the PM of the training stream.
Traditionally, we have had detailed design documents or a somewhat
completed system to document business processes on and then develop
the end user training courseware.

With this project, many components of the system are still in the
design phase with much back and forth between the vendor and the
client re design, look and feel, functionality, etc. Unfortunately,
we have over 500 end users of the new system that we have to train
prior to launch. Due to our training through put capacity, we need to
start training about 8 weeks prior to system go live in order to get
every user trained. The project schedule doesn't have many of the
system's components completing until well after training starts.

I am trying to find out how companies that use agile development
methodologies handle the training for the system’s end users. How do
you train end users on a system that may be not yet be finalized but
training has to start?

If you could point me to any info on this issue, I would appreciate
it.

Thanks,

Jeff Meyer
Project Manager

[Patty Eilers]

Hello Jeff,

Did you ever get any responses to this question? It's one that we're struggling with at my company now and I'm curious how you have gone about addressing the challenge?

Thanks in advance,

Patty Eilers

[Iain McKenna]

Jeff,

This doesn't actually sound very agile to me.  Indeed it sounds more like language is being mis-used to justify constantly changing requirements and not completing anything.

Agile teams release value early and often through interatively producing increments of "done", i.e. production quality product.  Therefore I would expect your training stream to have something to work with very early on where new capabilities will be added iteratively in each increment thus allowing you to iteratively and incrementally build out the training materials based on completed product capabilities.

Personally though I don't see why systems (I'm assuming that you're talking software here) can't be built in a way that is intuitive to use and therefore doesn't require training.  Especially by agile teams that collaborate frequently with real end users as well as the customer and other stakeholders.

Iain