Why Review?

As a development company with over ten years experience, F1 is well placed to advise its customers on all things relating to Microsoft technical training.

One of the best ways of doing this is to arrange for one of our developer trainers to visit you at your own site to assist and advise you on the training options open to you and the pros and cons of different training strategies.

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Why F1?

F1 is the only Certified Technical Education Centre (MCPLS (CTEC)) mandated by Microsoft to focus on developer training and for specific customers we are willing to offer this initial training review completely free of charge.

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Why is it Free?

F1 offers this free review as a demonstration of the commitment we are willing to make to you. We want to work in partnership to analyse your training requirements and, if selected as your training provider, provide ongoing training services.

It should be noted however that the training review in no way obligates you to use F1 or Microsoft products or services.

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Preparation

It is important to the success of the review to ensure that both management and staff are fully prepared prior to the review.

Summaries of formal training and on the job training received together with experience of development languages should be provided.

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Review of Training Options

One of the main problems in dealing with technical training is gaining a comprehensive and objective understanding of all options and what the pros and cons are of pursuing these different routes.

The free consultancy session can help technical staff, management and the personnel/training department determine how best to achieve these objectives. .

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Topics to be Covered as Required:

1.  Review of Training Problems

If you take away the hype, you come down to three basic facts:

• Technological development is increasing in complexity

• Organisations require their developers to be skilled to use this technology faster
• There is less time for learning.
  How do organisations best plan to resolve these problems?

2.  Lifetime Learning

There is a global change to the paradigm of lifetime learning where it is an accepted fact that training is needed throughout the entire working life of the worker. This ensures optimum use of new tools to develop 'best practice' cost effective solutions.

3.  The Move to Individual Responsibility for Learning

Along with the idea of lifetime learning is the fact that increasingly the individual has to take the main responsibility to plan and manage their own training and career path. When it comes down to it, in reality it is the individual, not the organisation, who is acquiring the knowledge.

4.  Pros and Cons of Certification

Pros
Certification is increasingly considered a useful measure of the competence of IT staff. In the case of operations and networking staff, MCSE is now almost a mandatory requirement. In the development field, it's equivalent is now being seen as a good yardstick to determine the competence of development staff.
The MCSD certification has many benefits for both employees and employers. These are described in detail in the independent white paper 'The Value of Certification for Solution Developers' available from F1's website or on request by phone.

Cons
The downsides of certification mainly consist of the length of time and effort that developers have to put in to achieve certification. In addition, there is still a concern that once an employee achieves further qualifications there are more likely to leave the organisation.
However, there is significant evidence (also detailed in the above white paper) that contradicts this and shows that on average qualified staff are less likely to leave than unqualified staff.

5.  Route Maps to Certification

Microsoft is well aware that for purely selfish reasons, it needs to ensure that developers are well trained. This leads to effective use of Microsoft technologies which in turn leads the customer to buy more Microsoft products.

The Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) qualification is the recommended route to take to ensure that developers have both a thorough knowledge of the specific development languages and a comprehensive understanding of development in the Windows and Internet environments.  Supplemental to this is the MCDBA qualification designed for database administrators.

However, in some circumstances it may be preferable to focus on specific skill set qualification by passing individual Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) examinations.

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Review of the Different Training Delivery Methods

1.  Classroom Based Training
This is the most traditional teaching method which is still preferred by most customers due to its ability to deliver concentrated learning with the trainer available at all times to answer questions and to help delegates resolve issues on the spot.

2.  Onsite & Customised Training
This is an increasingly popular training choice due to both the cost savings that can be made and the fact that organisations are able to 'pick and mix' from official curriculum to fine tune the course to their specific requirements.
There is also the option of 'Up Rating' training where the trainer focuses on specific technical issues, usually with a subset of students, to ensure a common skill set is achieved for all students prior to formal training sessions.

3.  Online Training
With the internet comes the option of training wherever and whenever you choose. It is important however to recognise and track the focus and commitment required for this training method.

4.  CD-rom Based Training
This training method became popular in the early Nineties, however it has been superseded by e-learning (which can be used offline!).

5.  Self Study Books
While this often appears the most cost effective method of training it does need a very significant amount of effort by the individual to work through and resolve their own problems and usually there is little or no backup help available.

6.  On-the-Job Training
This training method relies on having the developer/ trainer sit with your development staff while they work and observe, plan and implement training sessions during the day. It does mean that both work and training are inevitable stop-start in character.

7.  Post Course Mentoring
Mentoring is often considered a useful supplement to formal training. By having the developer/trainer visit and sit with your staff while they work, he can ensure that they are implementing the correct methods and best practice approaches.

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Structure of the Day

The day can be organised in various ways depending upon the specific requirements of the organisation. If required, sessions can be conducted around project-oriented groups of developers. Another option is for individuals to book separate private sessions where they can deal in depth with their specific requirements.

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Optional Training Summary Report

Following the training review we can provide an optional summary report containing the following information.

• Summary of current skill levels of staff.

• Outline the objectives of organisation and individuals.
• Details the routes to achieve these objectives.
• Recommendations as to how best to achieve these objectives.

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Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Reader is a free application which enables people to view and print flyers just as they would have been professionally printed .You can down load it from the site below:
Table of all F1 Flyers in PDF format

© F1 Computing Systems 2003