Anatomy of a Software Development Role: Trainer
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The training role, like all of the roles has its ups and its downs; here are a few of the highlights.
- Good: Get to see the results - More than anyone else in the software development process, the training professional gets to see the real results of the work. The training professional gets to see the smile (or frown) on the faces of the end users when they are introduced to the solution.
- Good: Get to meet and interact with lots of people.
- Bad: End of the lifecycle - Training is at the end of the life cycle. It's the last thing that has to happen to get the system fully functional. Because of its location training is often compressed into less time than it should have both from a content creation perspective and from the training delivery standpoint.
- Bad: Thankless - Often the trainer has the thankless job of working with users who are frustrated because their process is changing. It may take a great deal of energy to keep the users happy with the solution that is being delivered to them.
- Ugly: A wide variety of users - Training means working with all kinds of users including both highly respectable users and crackpots who will have to be suffered.
- Ugly: Some trainers are required to do a lot of traveling.
Conclusion
Training is without a doubt the most extroverted role of the software development process. Even the functional analysts don't have as much contact with people as the training professionals do. Key communications skills are essential to getting the role and staying in front of the best customers.
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