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Deploying an online software engineering education program in a globally distributed organization

A well-trained software engineering workforce is a key to success in a highly competitive environment. Changing tools and technologies, along with a rapidly changing development environment, make it incumbent on organizations to invest in training. In this paper, we describe our experience in deploying an online training program in a globally distributed organization. We write about the reasons behind ABB’s Software Development Improvement Program (SDIP), the requirements we established upfront, the people, processes and technologies we used, the promotion of SDIP, and metrics for measuring success. Finally, we share and describe results and lessons learned that could be applied to many organizations with similar issues. The goal of this paper is to provide a set of replicable best practices for initiating a software training program in a multi-national organization. The first SDIP online course was offered in June 2012. Since then, we have had more than 10,000 enrollments from employees in 54 countries. Today, our training library contains 89 e-learning, 17 webinar, video and virtual lab courses, and we have delivered more than 180 hosted webinars. Following each class, we ask students to evaluate the class. Ninety-eight percent are satisfied with the classes.