Training

Resource technique · See it on the map

Runnable here

Deliberately building a skill or certification a team member needs but doesn't yet have, aimed at a specific project need rather than general professional development.

When to use it

Use it when the gap is real and the timeline allows for it: a team member needs a tool, method or compliance certification the project genuinely requires, and there's enough runway before the work that needs it starts for the training to actually land.

When to avoid it

Don't schedule training as a box to check. The test of training is whether it changes what the person does at work, not whether a certificate was issued — a two-day course six weeks before the skill is used, with no practice in between, usually produces the certificate and not the behavior change. If the timeline can't support the skill being used soon after it's taught, either delay the training closer to when it's needed or acquire the skill instead of manufacturing it under time pressure.

Steps

1. Name the specific task the person can't yet do, not a general skill area — "can run the new deployment pipeline unassisted" trains differently than "learn DevOps."
2. Check the timing: training that isn't followed by an opportunity to use the skill within a few weeks mostly evaporates before it's needed.
3. Budget the person's capacity in hours for the training itself, not just the certificate cost — time in training is time not spent on assigned tasks, and a plan that ignores that quietly over-allocates them.
4. Verify afterward with the actual task, not a survey: have them do the thing the training was for and see whether it worked, before the project depends on it under real pressure.

What it produces

• A team member who can perform the specific task the project needed, verified against the task itself
• An accurate account of the capacity in hours the training actually cost the schedule

Common pitfalls

• Measuring training success by attendance or a certificate instead of by whether the behavior on the job actually changed.
• Scheduling training so far ahead of when the skill is needed that it has to be relearned anyway, wasting the capacity spent on it the first time.
• Training one person on a skill the whole team needs, creating a single point of failure the training was supposed to reduce, not create.

Worked example

A commercial print shop is adopting a new imposition tool for a large catalog job starting in three weeks. Rather than sending the prepress operator to a certification course scheduled two months out, the PM arranges a two-day hands-on session with the vendor the week before the catalog job starts, then has the operator run a real small job through the new tool before the catalog work depends on it.

Source

• PMBOK-6 §9.4.2.6

Where it comes from: this technique is named by the PMBOK Guide, 6th edition.