Database (and other) training

Hi! I am a [new] manager of a team of DBAs who among other things will be responsible for departmental training for an IT administration/development department of about 75 developers and DBAs.  We currently do not have a formal internal training program; only contractor DBA/developer/analyst who occasionally moonlights holding various "classes" or presentations on creating objects, shell scripting, random DBA stuff (i.e. "the good, bad and ugly of materialized views", that sort of thing) and so forth.

I'd like to look into establishing a more formal training strategy, and I'd love some advice on what others have tried, and what has worked or not worked. Obviously a focus is on DBA training for a small group of DBAs (how should they self-train each other as a group?) but broadly this same group of DBAs (and app server admins) likely would be responsible for managing the training of the development staff in their various platforms. It's just something that comes with the territory here, where the DBAs generally are former accomplished developers as well.

Any thoughts? What training patterns or structures work? What political issues (i.e. measuring the "unmeasurable" in order to have ROI numbers to justify the overhead cost) exist and what are some strategies to maneuver past them? Are we alone as a shop that puts the burden of technical training (even for non-DBAs) on the DBAs? If not, any thoughts would be GREATLY appreciated!

Swiego Received on Thu May 06 2004 - 20:18:14 CDT