What do we need to implement a new training initiative?
- Business problem
- User
- Goal
- Metrics
Let’s explore all of them.
A business problem is a problem that we want or need to solve to improve the organisation’s performance and drive value. We can take an airline as an example and the training of the cabin crew.
For cabin crew it is important to know the location of a lot of items in the aircraft and also all of the safety and service procedures.
The current training course is 4 weeks long, and it is fairly expensive to run, but even so, the feedback that we get from our new cabin crew is that they want more practical training and they get confused on their first couple of flights and any time they get on an unfamiliar aircraft.
We would like to solve this.
In this case, we have two user types– the trainee cabin crew member (a primary user) and the instructor (a secondary user).
The primary users are biased towards action and they are the ones that should be getting the most value from the application. The secondary users are relevant to the application but are not the target audience for achieving the goal.
In our case, the trainee cabin crew members are here to learn and become competent, and the instructors are here to help with learning, advise and observe.
Our users are Cabin crew and Cabin crew instructors.
So we have our problem and we have identified the users. Now let’s look at the goal.
Our goals are:
- Our team can perform up to the safety standards needed – the same as the previous training.
- Our customers are receiving a world-class service – the same as the previous training.
- The trainee cabin crew is more satisfied with the training – New.
- The cost of the training programme is decreased – New.
Whenever we are implementing new modes of training or education, we have to bear in mind that innovation is pointless if we lose any significant part of the user and business outcomes from the previously used method. Change doesn’t always equal improvement.
With the goals set, we need to find a way how we can measure them, and if it is not possible, we need to revisit the goals.
Metrics are important to measure success and return on investment.
- We want to measure the performance score of the trainee (Goal 1)
- We want to measure customer satisfaction and trace it back to the cabin crew if possible- if they were trained in VR or with traditional methods (Goal 2)
- We want to measure the satisfaction of the trainees and score it both for the traditional training method and the VR. (Goal 3)
- We want to measure how quickly trainees reach competency and what is the cost of a training group in VR vs the training group in a traditional setting. (Goal 4)
Once we have determined all of these, we need to design the training experience, making sure that we are including all of the learning objectives covered in the traditional training, and potentially adding new ones, if the virtual world allows for more.
Then we want to design the experience to cover the core training experience and focus it, if possible (so let’s say one aircraft).
We want to get AB tested in a real-world scenario – One of the training groups uses the VR and we measure the metrics of Goal 1 – Is the training good and Goal 3 – are the trainees more satisfied?
If any of the answers are a no, we need to iterate on the pilot software and the delivery of training until these two goals are met.
Once we have done that and both of these goals are met, we must do a financial analysis of the pilot and if the return on the investment and if meeting Goal 4 is possible. If the cost is the same or slightly increased, but our employees are providing better results and there is good initial feedback from customers, then the increased cost might be worth it.
If the results are good and the cost of the training for one group is decreased we are in a great place. Now we need to plan the scaling of the training programme and the real rollout. This will inevitably increase the costs in the short term, because of the logistics of introducing any new process or procedure and decommissioning the old one, and these need to be taken into account, but looking at a refresh cycle of 3-5 years, the benefits, most likely, will outweigh the costs.
For this, in the particular use case, we will do a rollout of the new training platform in one base airport at a time with a goal of fully replacing the existing training programme in 12 months after the successful results of the pilot programme. We need to continue monitoring the data and making any adjustments if necessary once we learn something new.
I have left out a lot of detail about the software development itself and the hardware logistics- I hope to cover these topics in other articles.
Please let me know if you found this useful or if you want to learn more about XR programme management and delivery.
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