Training for Individuals -ADVERT-

Training courses for specialist subjects are difficult to provide to individuals. If the subject matter is widely in demand then one can schedule public courses knowing that of the hundreds that want to do the course a core number will book places for the scheduled dates.

For more specialist courses like for example "Business Architecture" conventional training usually only can be organised for groups of people within businesses. This is how most of the business architecture courses that we have run at Dever Solutions have run historically.

Frequently it is a team which is wanting to build up a business architecture capability and wishes to use the course to facilitate its building process - this has worked well for many of our clients over the last two years or so.

However several times during the year we get individuals wanting to book on to a course but there is never enough who want to do it at the same time! It would be unfair to recover the full costs from an individual to run a 121 course delivered in a conventional way; it is the fixed costs of paying tutors travel and subsistence that makes this difficult.

In order to solve this issue we will be creating a 121 mentoring version of our popular "Business Architecture An Approach For Effective Business Design" course using remote delivery and our e-learning portal.

http://www.deverlearning.co.uk/.

This won't be just slide packs and resourses but scheduled lecturing time with tutors using conference call - audio and visual - and other remote delivery techniques.

This will enable us to price the learning experience at levels affordable to independently financed individuals - contractors and consultants and the like. At the moment the ability to deliver a course to less than 4-5 people on one occasion, particularly away from our home territory, is restricting its access to many.

A Token Post! What is a Token?

A process does nothing until it is triggered. Some therefore refer to a process as a static business item or object.When some event happens the process "fires", the receipt of a letter a timed event or a phone call are examples of triggers.When the event occurs a relay race starts through the process activity boxes - think process map here- and the baton passes through the flow until the process ends.If the process splits into parallel activity the relay baton, otherwise known as the token, duplicates or splits until it merges later, or each part of the split token finds an end point.The token represents the flow of activity through the process identifying the event that started it all off.So, a process is static until triggered and becomes dynamic whilst the token or token parts are still active until the tokens either combine and reach the end or all of the tokens reach the end point in the process.If you want to do process simulation getting your head round this is essential!I am currently designing a new training programme in "Developing Your Business Processes as Business Assets" which will address this issue amongst others.

Visio Helps Me Bill More Days! But is this Good Value for My Clients?

I was asked to do some simple process mapping recently. I asked what tool they wanted me to use and surprise surprise "VISIO 2003" came back as an answer.

I arrived on site and ran some 121 interviews and began to draw.

Several days later on schedule I delivered the results and was then asked to do some customer experience (value chain) work with the process drawings. The re-drawing with all those fiddly links that get messed up on changing things took several days with much angst and frustration; as everyone who has used this generic drawing tool will tell you.

Why do you use Visio? I asked during the assignment wash up meeting.

- Well, its on the standard build and its cheap" was the reply.-

- "We don't want to spend money on more software and anyhow it is too hard getting the purchase request approved by I.T." !

My conclusion was - had they recommended a professional mapping tool I could have done the work in 40% of the time or produced more in the time allocated.

So is saving money on a cheap tool really a saving when a freelancer, charging several hundred pounds a day takes, a week to do what he could do in two days with a professional process tool like IGrafx flowcharter? http://www.igxsolutions.co.uk/

False economy I thinks!!

The addition factor is that Visio drawings are drawings not models and very 2d not being suitable for further use ; but that is another discussion for another day.