How do you upskill your cloud data team?

Strong fundamentals enable team members to self-direct learning confidently as needs evolve. Favor hands-on learning through sandbox environments and hackathons over passive content consumption. Incentivize upskilling through learning goals tied to career advancement and compensation. Finally, assemble a cloud knowledge base with institutional best practices, guidelines, code snippets, and architectural diagrams. At my previous company, we organized regular hackathons where team members could experiment with new cloud data tools and techniques. We also provided access to online courses and certification programs and encouraged team members to share their learnings with the rest of the team.

Don't start with a skill assessment. Your team doesn't exist in a vacuum. First, collect their historical context - compare their predictions (plans/estimates) to what was actually delivered. Have they consistently struggled with a particular category of effort? Discuss these efforts with the team, and their (internal) customers. Next, assess their priorities. Which critical initiatives are dependent on the Cloud Data team and do they overlap with areas they've historically struggled? ?? That's where your support will have the biggest impact, on the team and the business. Now, you can deliver a more targeted skill assessment.

One thing I've found helpful: As structured approach to upskill your team: Assessment and Gap Analysis: Evaluate the current skill levels of your team members. Identify the skills required for your current and future projects. Perform a gap analysis to determine which skills are lacking or need improvement. Training and Workshops: Formal Training: Enroll your team in courses offered by cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, etc. They offer a wide range of courses from beginner to advanced levels. Workshops: Organize hands-on workshops where team members can practice and apply what they've learned.

Upskilling your cloud data team is essential to stay current with the rapidly evolving cloud technologies and best practices. Here's a concise strategy to help your team stay ahead: - **Assessment & Training**: Evaluate skills; use platforms like Coursera for training. - **Certifications & Practice**: Secure cloud certifications; emphasize hands-on projects. - **Collaboration & Sharing**: Promote sharing via workshops and tools like Slack. - **Stay Updated & Engage**: Monitor cloud updates; attend industry events. - **Soft Skills & Feedback**: Prioritize communication and teamwork; seek regular feedback.

Training: Enroll your team in cloud-specific courses. Platforms like Coursera, Udemy, and Pluralsight offer courses on various cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and GCP. Certifications: Encourage your team members to obtain relevant cloud certifications. These not only validate their skills but also provide structured learning paths. Workshops and Seminars: Organize regular workshops, webinars, and seminars. Bringing in external experts for specialized topics can provide new insights.

? Foundations: We’re diving deep into the core of cloud computing, ensuring we have a robust understanding of its principles and nuances. ? Hands-on Application: From databases to analytics, and from security measures to cost optimization strategies, we’re exploring it all. The objective? Practical know-how, not just theoretical understanding. ? Learning Methods: I’ve cherry-picked a blend of online courses, hands-on workshops, and real-world projects. This ensures a balanced approach, giving us both breadth and depth in our learning journey. ? Continuous Assessments: We’re setting checkpoints along the way, ensuring we don’t just learn, but master each skill.

If your org partners with cloud providers, they will usually provide free or discounted workshops for their certification programs, which is a great opportunity for current employees to upskill and keep up with the best practices in the industry. Utilizing these valuable resources can help the team implement safe and performant solutions.

When upskilling your cloud data team, focus first on foundational competencies. Strong fundamentals enable team members to self-direct learning confidently as needs evolve. Favor hands-on learning through sandbox environments and hackathons over passive content consumption. Incentivize upskilling through learning goals tied to career advancement and compensation. Finally, assemble a cloud knowledge base with institutional best practices, guidelines, code snippets, and architectural diagrams. This repository lets teams ramp quickly by standing on the shoulders of past work rather than reinventing the wheel.

Continuously evaluating learning outcomes is key to ensuring training translates to impact. Conduct pre-and post-assessments to quantify core competency gains across individuals and teams. Supplement with qualitative feedback gathered through surveys, 1:1s, and focus groups. Probe what resonated most and where people struggled. Connect data skills development to business KPIs like improved system reliability, faster product delivery, and increased innovation. Recognize outstanding educational outcomes through compensation adjustments, awards programs, and growth opportunities.

The nature of your business will be the deciding factor in your strategy for up leveling your cloud data team - in my opinion, the most effective teacher is time in role with hands-on keyboards, and an experienced mentor. The ratio of mentors to novices, depends on how tolerant your business is to mistakes and delays. In a scale-up, I prefer my staff and principles to outnumber associates in critical efforts. In a mature organization, on less strategic efforts, you can afford to tip the balance in the other direction. The magic of expertise is context: how much of the data stack and flow they can 'fit into their context ?? window' - have your most senior team member regularly synthesize and communicate your data architecture.

Upskilling is one of the most complex goal for a company. In the "tech" world the challenge could even stronger. In the past I have taken the lead of a huge team in the data field that was really senior but with competences only on some old style tool (e.g. only SAS an no Python). What I have done is to inser many young guys with no working experience but knowing the right tools. Managers was forced to help young guys, at first, moving fron "tech" to methodology, then including new hard skills acquired by experience in the new projects. This means: no training and no one fired. Fresh boost of conpetences in the team to force older to manage and learn new stuff not to loose their seniority in the group