IT Staff Training/Sharing Knowledge - How do you do it?

[flyinghaggis]

Just wanted to pose the question to everyone of how do you handle training staff within the IT department and making sure everyone has an up to date knowledge of all the systems/software used in the school? There are plenty of threads on training admin/teaching staff but nothing that I can see relating to how you do it within the IT department itself!

 

Speaking from personal experience it wasn't such an issue when I started as we were quite a small team where everyone knew what everybody else was doing. We were all in the same office for most of the day at the same time and were able to discuss/cover everything done amongst ourselves so we all had a good overview of everything.

Since then the networks trebled in size /complexity along with the number of staff (actually that's only doubled!) and it's now proving tricky trying to make sure everyone know's how all of the systems work and hang together.

 

What's tended to happen increasingly, as we've been seriously pressed for time during the last couple of years because of several major IT migration projects, is that we've all ended up specialising in our own separate tasks/areas and when someone's off nobody else is able to fully cover for them to the same level which obviously isn't sustainable in the longer term.

 

So how does everyone generally go about organising training within the IT department?

 

Do you organise weekly departmental training sessions, daily catch-up sessions, give staff books to study at home, send them on 3rd party training courses (MSCE/etc), Use wiki's/helpdesk systems to create standard procedures and guides?

 

Any thoughts/ideas/insights would be appreciated

 

TIA

Edited April 14, 2011 by flyinghaggis

[russdev]

I think first thing is a wiki to document stuff (also make sure staff add to the wiki when you set something up not afterwards)... Make that basics that everyone puts info up there but the key to this is as soon as info is up there get together 15 to 30 mins max for that person to give rest of you the highlights. Last but not least get a day in summer (and easter holidays if can) and set it is training so that all of you have time to get bigger things across.

 

Russell