My Story || Learning a Tool

Every tool has a story to tell. The story of its original requirements, the story of the language it is based on, the story of the person who imagined the world with this tool in place. And in my opinion, mastering that tool requires that story to be seen.

Let me tell you my story of learning my 1st PLM tool. 

A month into the job, I was asked to explore PTC’s Windchill. With prior PLM knowledge and a little training on tools functionality, I started exploring it on my own.

The next day, when my manager asked, did you understand the tool, the only thing I had to say was,

“I know the UI, I know how to find a functionality, so I guess I do.”

And guess what, the seniors were at first surprised, then they got confused, and then they moved to feel concerned. Because there was no way I could have understood that complex tool in such a short time, and yet I genuinely believed that I know enough.

So, what was the catch?

It was the fact, I did not know the story that went into making the tool, neither did I know the story that I was supposed to create. And without that, I did not have an enabling tool. The only thing I saw was a bundle of functionality that can be explored as and when needed.

Luckily, my manager realized it and gave me a document filled with the story of what I must achieve.

And then my journey started, filled with trials and errors, cries for help, mentors, developers, experts, and so on.

But the most important thing I discovered in this journey was itched in my mind, and that was how to approach any tool for learning.

My iterations brought me to the following steps:

1. Understand the objective you want to achieve from your tool. It can be any specific scenario, a real-life problem, a hypothetical client problem statement, anything. (Even in excel workshops, the trainers come with stories containing in-built issues for you to solve)
2. Break it down into steps (a process that you can follow).
3. Do not blame the tool for something you cannot find. Initially focus on exploiting it completely, refer to examples of other similar scenarios if you want.

“Existing tools and technologies can be leveraged to achieve digital transformation.”

1. This sentence tells us that you can achieve it with any proven technology if you know your objective. You do not need to buy a whole new toolkit just to match your customer.
2. Try to visualize how the functions of the tool can help you complete your process. Utilize thing visualization to draw your own business process
3. Implement your process in your tool.

Additional skills that helped me while learning enterprise IT tools are:

1. Understand the basics of the OOPS Concept (How object-oriented languages work). It comes in handy when you are addressing any tool designed on Object-oriented programming languages.
2. Read the help manual of the tool carefully to understand the functionalities and examples cited in it. 
3. Try to visualize how the elements in your problem could be addressed by OOPS concepts.

These are some of the many tricks that I learned throughout my career to explore any new tool that came my way.

I would love to know your experience and learnings from mastering any new tool.