An Exercise in Patience (read extreme boredom)

May 24, 2009 18:09

I really hope my company hasn't spent a lot of money on online training modules, because, frankly, most of them suck ass. Now, I will admit there are hundreds of these online training modules available, so there is the potential for there to be good modules. However, my sample of ten so far has yielded ten duds. Perhaps the more advanced or ( Read more... )

online training, learning, work, training, reader participation, education

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mcmiller May 24 2009, 22:25:59 UTC
Talk to Tony about how new, excessively structured project management responsibilities (and a boss from that school of thought) caused his coworker to quit after 22 years at their company - walking away from all retirement benefits and with no other job lined up in the process ( ... )

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moosesocks May 25 2009, 18:36:22 UTC
This essay seems to brush up against what you're talking about.

Before starting my job last summer (at a government lab), I was required to sit through about a dozen training modules that sounded more or less similar to what pcjunkie experienced.

Unfortunately, these modules concerned industrial safety, which makes it all the more alarming that they contained virtually no information, and were laden with buzzwords. As I understand it, Health & Safety managers have taken the same approach as project management, instituting as much of their own jargon and proprietary knowledge as possible.

This is particularly troubling, considering that the effectiveness of their jobs (and thus the safety of the workers) depends upon their ability to communicate clearly. Unfortunately, they seem focused instead on justifying their existence.

Academia is an entirely different beast that (ironically) doesn't seem to have been studied or discussed all that much. Over the past few weeks, a few reports of severe safety hazards and general mistreatment of ( ... )

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6x7 May 28 2009, 12:50:32 UTC
look into "scrum" training and agile development: my understanding is that everything is built into monthly chunks for 4-9-person teams, and deadlines are never allowed to be pushed -- project features must be cut or resources must be added in order to meet non-negotiable deadlines.

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pcjunkie May 28 2009, 12:59:09 UTC
Yeah, we are already implementing the scrum methodology on one of our projects and I really love the concept. Making it work with the Army environment is its own special challenge.

Sadly, I still have to take this stupid class.

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