This incident coupled with some of my other experiences forced me to ask various questions – Do organizations in India take training seriously? Or it is just looked as a support function that needs to meet the checklist requirements of having 5-6 days of training per employee in a year? Do training companies in India have the respect of Corporate India? While pondering about these questions, I realized that the current situation of training industry in India can be equated to the Indian IT services companies in the early nineties. I recall several interviews of the leaders of Indian IT services industry (Mr. Narayan Murthy of Infosys, Mr. Azim Premji of Wipro and Mr. S. Ramadurai of TCS) where they struggled to explain the CXOs of fortune 1000 companies that IT services can be offshored to India. These leaders have candidly mentioned that they were offered tea and were thanked by those CXOs who thought that such work cannot be done from a country like India. A few visionary leaders of the west like Mr. Jack Welch of GE could see the merits of outsourcing the non-core functions of their business. However those decisions were questioned by many CXOs and “India offshoring” had a bad connotation attached to it. But the excellent leadership of Indian IT companies and the hard & smart work of middle class Indian workforce made Indian offshoring a huge success and a mandatory item in the strategic planning of any Fortune 1000 company in the world. Indian offshoring earned the respect for itself due to the value it offered.

At CELTEM, we see a similar trend in the Corporate Training industry in the country. Today most of the corporates in India has got in-house training department and are unable to leverage the power of outsourcing of their non-core functions like training, though their own cost of owning and managing large training departments is huge. This is due to the unavailability of reliable, capable and predictable Training Service Providers (TSPs) in the country so far. Hence in the process these TSPs and trainers community in India have got minimal respect in Corporate India.

Our team at CELTEM strongly believes that the current perception about TSPs and trainers can be changed if training companies show the capability to address the learning needs of employees of corporate India and can offer the right value to their clients. As part of Team CELTEM, we have worked with our clients to understand their training needs, designed and delivered customized training workshops to beat their expectations. It gives immense satisfaction to us when our client’s end-customer acknowledges the significant improvements in the participants after our training workshops. But our mission to create the respect for Training Industry in the country is a huge task and we are working tirelessly to achieve this goal.

Based on our experience in this business for four and half years, we strongly feel that Training Service Providers in India can achieve the goals of being respected for their work if a few things happen in the training ecosystem:
1) Professionals with enough hand-on experience get into the classroom / training. How can someone without any hands-on experience train others and get the respect?
2) Trainers should own the responsibility of the time spent by a group of professionals attending the training and should ensure that the participant gets enough return on the time spent on training
3) Training departments at corporate India should spend enough time to do the training needs analysis and be proactive in scheduling training programs that has measureable return on investment
4) Corporate India should look at training outsourcing as a strategic initiative than an one-time transaction
5) Corporate India should focus more on role-based training than need-based training

We at CELTEM love to discuss the challenges of the training industry in India and I will be continuing to pen down our experiences on this journey!

We would appreciate your comments on this topic as we believe that many more minds are required to realize our dreams of making Training Industry a respected one in the country!!!

Nabin Roy,PMP
Co-founder and COO

The answer of the first question, this is how the priority expressed by most

1. I want to pass PMP® exam
2. I know that for passing PMP® exam, I have to understand PMBOK®, and hence I would like to know it in detail
3. How PMBOK® can help me in my day-to-day project management or will it at all?

Most of them feel that a positive outcome from point #3 could be a real gain out of the workshop, but also most apprehensive about it. And as a faculty I focus how can to bring #3 up in the list which for a trainer would be the most important achievement. CELTEM’s focus is always to bring practitioner’s approach in training and a focused review session on complete PMBOK® [PMBOK tour – implementing it in your project] on the last day, we are able to achieve this. The joy and confidence I see in their face truly much more an achievement than any certification, both for me and the participants. The team finds a true meaning of learning. Certification follows as a natural sequence after that and is definitely important because industry always need formal credibility.

Regarding the second question of why PMP®, there are some obvious answers, but here are some specific points that I think are very relevant here -

Standardization – When i put this scenario in the PMP® workshop “let us assume that in project status review meeting with his stakeholders, the project manager comments we have successfully completed the scope verification process of the project. What is he referring to? Obviously i don’t get a single viewpoint and that where everybody starts realizing the need for standardization in project management processes and terminologies and this in my opinion is PMI’s biggest contribution to the global PM community.

Centralizing PM Processes– We all are  familiar with PMO (Project Management Office / Program Management Office ), but if we try to trace back the how this group became the most critical group in the organization contributing project success, one of the pushing factors is to help those project managers to implement formal PM processes across organization. PMs are already overloaded within their day-to-day  problems in the project, hence organization realizes the need for such a group at an organization level to help PMs to standardise and centralize PM processes.

Providing confidence to customer – In many cases client in their RFPs asks information about what % of PM pool are PMP® certified. This gives a confidence to them in recognizing the solution provider as a process oriented organization and not chaotic.

Developing global PM community – It’s a great networking opportunity once one become PMP® and became a formal member of the PMP® community.

The above article is the author’s individual opinion on the subject – and while any individual is free to disagree with it, the author is not liable to justify her views.

Mostly, whenever PMs had used any numbers, it was under compulsion by organization’s senior management or the quality department.

To quote a cliché ‘Project Managers had often used numbers and statistics like a drunkard uses a lamp-post, more for support than for illumination’.

Yet, numbers can be very revealing and  illuminating! Quantitative methods can become incredible planning and tracking tool for a PM. Above all QPM as a ‘predicting’ device (CMM Level 4) can be source on competitive advantage.

Can you confidently sign a bonus-penalty SLA with your client aware that there is a reasonable risk-reward involved and that you can not only show confidence to your client but also consistently earn financial rewards for your project.

I can assure you, your client will be more than happy to part with some extra money in exchange for assurance that you can deliver the goods in time, within cost and promised quality. The question is ‘Are you and your organization ready?’

My objective during the QPM workshop is to make PMs become friends with numbers and metrics, and not something that has to be done because your organization is some CMMI level 4 certified.

The objective is to demystify QMP and capability maturity model. What does it mean to be a more mature organization? How do organization implement processes that translate into CMMI Level-4 activities? What does it mean to a project manager? Does it really help a project manager do her job better i.e. meet and exceed the clients expectation while balancing the project triple constrains?

In this series of blogs I will post samples of my workshop exercises and what they illustrate? This will benefit both young and experienced Project Managers. Young PMs will appreciate why organizations insist on collecting metrics and how it can be used. Senior managers would benefit from these learning to help develop and implement better metrics definition and collection implementation within their organization thereby providing the leadership expected from them.

Hopefully these blogs will also become a hot spot for debate and collaboration between project managers. Please do post your questions and I or other PMs would try to answer them.

Next Post: Understanding QPM as PM activity as well as CMMi Level-4 activity.

We as an organization should respect the youth, we should be patient during their growing phase and believe in them that they are our next baton holder in the long relay to success. Grooming & nurturing them to be a part of the family is an ongoing process – the first step to it is an induction program.

Our Technology driven induction training program is a well designed foundation program to introduce the Basics, to enhance the existing skills and develop new ones for the freshers. We constantly strive to strike a balance to deliver efficiently and give scope for challenges to the fresher’s to be innovative during the induction program. This induction program is a simulation as to how the real time organization works, keeping in mind issues like stress, deadlines, team work and effectiveness.

During the induction program we have designed sessions to bring in the experienced delivery managers to interact with the fresher’s to share their experience and make them aware of everyone’s accountability to the stake holders. To perform and grow with the organization is the only way to success – this message can be passed on to them from these delivery heads, who will be looked upon as mentors in the initial phase. Our grading system is also an indicator to measure one’s growth during the process. Every induction program must have a proper feedback mechanism to measure the program’s success. The induction program’s is so designed to provide quick response to their queries/feedback and this is also our first step to communicate to the fresher that their voice is heard.

I still remember my first induction program – I had to travel to Delhi from Bangalore and there were employees from all over the country for the program. Just out of college, I was really surprised when I was told that the CEO takes time out to meet every employee. It was a proud moment to shake hands with him and his words are still remembered, true to every word first impression is the best impression. This interaction was very personal and every word he spoke was very encouraging. Words like empowerment, cost cutting, time management , ownership which we all experience was communicated in the best possible ways a fresher just out of college could absorb.

After being a part of this  industry for 9 plus years, meeting the freshers still gives me happiness as they are full of energy and enthusiasm. Though as an organisation, we perceive ourselves to be very approachable, it may not be true unless we really take time to meet the fresher’s. Our experience will definitely help them to shape their career and learnings shared from our past mistakes will make them to be prepared. Their achievements, big or small, when appreciated will make them to strive better. Revealing how disciplinary action taken against erring employees in the past will make them a confident whistle blower. We strive to bring in these core messages through our FRESHERS INDUCTION PROGRAM, so that the freshers are productive and work towards organisational goals right from day one…