EDS is a global corporation that provides a broad portfolio of business and technology solutions to help clients improve their business performance. The firm’s core portfolio includes information technology, applications and business process services and information technology transformation services. EDS is ranked 95th on the Fortune 500, with 2004 revenues exceeding $20 billion.
At EDS, people are the product, and the breadth of product is massive. The company has approximately 117,000 employees in 60 countries around the globe, with more than 85,000 in IT-related roles in areas such as applications development, infrastructure, help desk and networking.
In the past year, under the direction of Keith Bridges, Ph.D., CPT, director of technical development within global learning and development, EDS has re-skilled more than 50,000 technical consultants. “EDS is committed to re-skilling our entire technical workforce through a blended learning approach, centered on hands-on experiences,” Bridges said. The “Technical Excellence Program” has been specifically constructed to handle this rapid training effort and to service the specific needs of EDS’s technical community.
“Technical Excellence includes skill development like the IT certification paths and so forth, but it also includes what we call the TEP Immersion Workshop,” Bridges said. “That is actually a two-week, instructor-led class that we are deploying all over the world in the 60-plus countries where we have people. This particular course, while it’s called Technical Excellence, is really an in-depth understanding of the technical direction of EDS as it applies to the agile enterprise platform, which is EDS’ new system.”
The goals for the Technical Excellence Program are:
- Train technical staff more quickly, establishing common skills so the company can focus on timely, low-cost delivery.
- Enhance employee skills development.
- Cut costs, while improving employee morale, job satisfaction and retention rates.
- Promote personal enrichment for employees by improving morale, job satisfaction and individual skill sets.
- Generate positive ROI for the consulting business practices.
At the heart of the Technical Excellence Program is a variety of blended-learning opportunities that provide independent study in structured curriculum paths, live hands-on labs for experiential learning, Web-based courseware, resource subscriptions, coaching and mentoring, and courses taught over the EDS Global Broadcast Network.
The program features newly developed Skills Enhancement Fast Tracks focused on a dozen key EDS partner technologies, including Microsoft .NET, Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), Cisco Networking, Oracle Enterprise Applications, Windows Server 2003 Management, SQL Server, Sun Solaris and others. EDS leverages Toolwire LiveLabs to provide on-demand and scheduled virtual labs for the majority of these prioritized fast tracks.
The blended learning solution has been deployed to all EDS consultants worldwide. Feedback from participants has been positive—many rave about the enhanced opportunities for skills development. The program has received complete support and endorsement from the highest levels of executive leadership at EDS.
The corporate goal of the Technical Excellence Program is to directly impact bottom-line costs and enhance delivery capabilities, with a positive ROI in the field. Initially, EDS management set a goal of 20,000 trained individuals by the end of 2005. Amazingly, the Skills Enhancement Fast Tracks touched more than 50,000 consultants with over 170,000 technical courses in the first year—250 percent ahead of plan and one year ahead of schedule. “We have been able to provide our consultants with greater skills transfer because they are quickly able to translate concepts into skills, thus bridging the gap between education and experience,” Bridges said.
David James Clarke IV is co-founder and chief evangelist for Toolwire. He can be reached at dclarke@clomedia.com.
