I have been working with our lead architect on a couple of survey projects.
- The first project captured self-reported application development skills. We’ve had a couple of projects this year where our in-house staff didn’t have the skills needed for the new application. No one’s fault – it happens when you replace a major piece of your enterprise system after using the same thing for 10+ years. The architects and management wanted to get a better feel for what skills our developers possess and, when we go into another one of these projects, what we need to account for if we go a different direction from our current systems. For me, this project was a lesson in why skills databases are so expensive.
- Another project captured feedback for in-house, vendor supplied and commonly available training materials and events. This includes webinars, week-long classroom “bootcamps”, online tutorials, YouTube videos, knowledge bases, books, anything someone grabs to learn how to do something. What are people accessing if they need to learn something? What are the pros and cons of what they used? Is this worthy of further investigation and investment? Is there a particular direction we should take when we spend training money? More online support? More boot-camps? Ultimately, management wants to see where the best return on investment lies.
It has been a good opportunity to see what we have lying around the office and how the survey tools we have available work.
Unfortunately, I have not been entirely happy with the survey tools I’ve used so far
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I want to figure out why I’m not happy with what we have + see whether there is something within our existing tool set that I may have missed.
The exercise also provides evidence that what we currently have doesn’t meet our needs (if that is truly the case – I think part of the issue is my inexperience).
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So how do survey tools fit in to the Learning Architecture?
1) You know those smile sheets? Type of survey.
2) Want to do more robust Kilpatrick evaluations? Survey.
3) Quizzes? The way most are written (multiple choice / true-false) – Survey.
Most of the LMS and Talent Management systems I’ve encountered have built in assessment / survey tools.
And the nice thing about putting together requirements on our side – it helps other groups outside of “training”. Many groups within an organization, at some point, want to run a survey to figure out
- Whether their service meets their customer’s needs
- Where there may be opportunities to improve
- If a program is working (at least by perception, reality may need further validation)
Over the next few posts – I’m going to show you my process for capturing requirements from scratch.
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