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What's Training Like?

We start from your actual challenges and shape a curriculum around that. We want to know: how do engineers in your organization get promoted? get pay raises? get new opportunities? How do YOU assess them?

If you have a formal career ladder and assessment criteria then we'll build around them, pulling modules from our library that develop the right skill sets. The real meat of training isn't in our videos and readings, though, its in the discussion groups that help engineers think through their challenges and share knowledge with their colleagues.

Assessment

Each participant gets an hour long 1:1 with their trainer in which the trainer does a short system design exercise with them. We've worked with you to prepare a scoring rubric and will use this conversation to get a sense of who your people are and how they think about systems

Modules

Every two weeks, participants are assigned a module introducing a particular topic and a discussion question for the next group meeting. We use the group sessions to identify challenges to go deep on, and the modules to introduce different approaches and frameworks to apply to those challenges.

Week 1 ~ 2

Process mapping

A process map often serves as the baseline with which system requirements are defined and other system models can be built. For legacy systems it can help us determine what we actually know about the system and where we lack visibility.
Crafting Architecture from Process

Week 3 ~ 4

System Requirements

What do variations between the ideal and real process tell us about the system requirements? To what extent is the process tied to existing technology and solutions? Are their legal/compliance standards that require us to support some variance from the happy path?
Hacking Conway's Law

Week 5 ~ 6

Behaviors & Invariants

Participants are given a challenge: make a case for removing some of the divergent behavior discovered and discussed in previous weeks. What shouldn’t the system be able to do and why? What would make that behavior impossible?
Getting Level of Specification Right

Execution Included

We don't run classes, we run in-house seminars on how to solve your most pressing problems with the people you've tasked with solving those problems. Participants use group sessions to test our methods on real life systems. Insight gleamed from those session converts directly into issues and streams of productive work. There's no transition period where we've handed off recommendations and you need to figure out what to do, your best people already know what to do by the time we leave.

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Frequently asked questions

You’ve got questions. We’ve got answers.

How long is a training program?

We require a 3 month commitment for all training programs. Beyond that it depends on your needs and goals. We will work with you to design a program specific to your challenges and are happy to accommodate different budgets and scheduling concerns.

How many people can be in a training program?

We train engineers in groups of 5. Fewer than 5 engineers risks scheduling conflicts disrupting the overall training experience, so we set that as our absolute minimum in order to ensure a good experience for everyone in training. When organizations want to train more people we break them up into groups of 5-8 people and sometimes recommend staggering them in order to ensure training does not interfere with overall business operations.

What skill level of engineer do you work with?

All types! With engineers at the beginning of their careers we tend to work on things like code review, prioritization and dealing with imposter syndrome. With mid to senior engineers we work on architectural principles, formal verification, and modeling of systems. We even do training for engineering managers on hiring and developing talent.

Do you focus on any particular technology?

No! Our training focuses on reasoning and strategy. We are agnostic when it comes to the details of the technology and have worked with clients on everything from ClearPath Dorados to Microsoft Azure

How will I know how my people are doing in training?

We'll settle that with you upfront. We end a training program with a final report giving you stats on attendance levels, module engagement, our observations and recommendations along with trends we saw with participants and how they improved as a group.

For customers who request it, we can also prepare more formal assessments, like quizzes and tests, to confirm that participants are using their designated training time appropriately.