I am working with an enterprise group to develop a curriculum that will be used across internal training workshops executed around the globe. They are looking to push their entire company towards an API way of doing things, and empower business and IT groups to realize their API potential. I'm anonymizing the company, as they have not agreed to me talking about publicly, but as I do, I wanted to share my work behind the scenes, and help other organizations be aware of the work that I do.
The API training curriculum is going to be designed to reach and bring up to speed three levels of internal users:
- API Beginners - The introduction to the world of APIs for business or technical groups.
- API Partners - An outward focus for how APIs bring value to the organization and operations.
- API Trainers - Training the next generation of trainers, evangelists, and storytellers within the organization.
The beginner level will be designed for all employees to attend, no matter which group they come from. The second level of training will focus on equipping the more outward focused employees, with the third tier focusing on the long-term institutionalization of an API-first approach across the company. Customized tiers can be developed in the future, but these three levels will get things moving across all areas of global operations.
Here is a summary of how the training will be developed and executed:
- Design Curriculum - Design, develop, and prepare the curriculum, and the materials for all three workshop levels.
- Run Pilot Sessions - Conduct 2-3 pilot sessions with a controlled group of users, with possible changes, and additions to the content.
- Execute Workshops - Execute workshops in up to five countries initially, targeting only English speaking regions in the first round.
- Train the Trainer - Organize a train-the-trainer session for future API Evangelists, and workshop trainers, preparing for future rollout.
I develop and evolve my curriculum and training materials as I would an API, using Github. All content is developed as an interactive repository in HTML, CSS, and JS, with exportable PDFs, and presentations are done using Deck.js. The goal is to create content that can be versioned, forked, and localized for workshops, training, and across operations.
I am willing to offer a 10% discount if your organization is willing to allow the story of this process to be told publicly. A blog series about the process, from design to implementation. I'm happy to keep specific operational, and IP related material out of stories, but I would like to tell the story from the perspective of the trainer and evangelist -- adding another storyteller layer to the program.
If you need help with API transformation across your company, organization, institution, or government agency, and would like to develop training and workshop curriculum, feel free to reach out. API for beginners is always a great place to start, but I'm happy to help craft other internally distributed curriculum like API design guides, API operational strategies, all the way to API evangelism material. Let me know how I can help--developing materials for established organizations to assist them in making the shift towards doing business with APIs is something I'm investing significant cycles into in 2017 and 2018.
