Training guide and How to train client to use your apps

Let say, you have created a complex apps, connected to lots of different APIs and block chain. Have been developed for the last 6 months until you lost track of documentation (don’t do this!). Has 50+ features inside out and it’s been deployed to production, and ready to be served to your customer. Think it’s done? Not yet! It’s time to explain to your client how to use it!

1. Provide resources

Provide everyone with enough resource. Make sure you give at least brief explanation about your apps. How to run it, where to access it. Make sure everyone has the ability to run it, or make sure the apps is ready to be tested. You wouldn’t want the app showing error, right when you training your user how to use it.

Also, providing everyone with a training guide/map wouldn’t hurt much, and will help the training session more intuitive.

2. Make sure your objectives, target, and difficulties

Explain to the trainee, what is your app is all about. What is the proposed ideas. Whats made it being made. What points need to be accomplished by the app. What is the purpose of the training. And most importantly, how your app can be helpful to them.

3. Be Informative

Make everyone comfortable with the atmosphere. Make sure everyone has no difficulties on sharing or asking out question about the app. Also make sure you let them know how to, before the training started.

4. Easy language, easy training

Use easy language! Don’t use system or programming language which the trainee wouldn’t understand. Most of the time, their background wouldn’t be the same as yours, so treat them kindly by using general explanation based language.

5. Explain in short term

If you can’t explain something in it’s short term, you didn’t understand it good enough.

The meaning is there, by the words. If you can’t explain what an ice cream is using 1 or two sentences, you probably wouldn’t able to explain what is their apps is all about. Make sure to simplify everything and translate it to general language before explaining to the trainee.

TIPS: Sometime, when I had difficulty doing this steps, the way I do this is by imagining an invisible microphone in front of my mouth, and everything I said will be recorded. This way, I’ll have extra awareness on what I will say about things, and avoid blurting out wrong explanation or weird noises to the trainee.

6. Any suggestion helps improve your apps

Suggestion tends to surface on training, since everyone is trying the app, and sometimes, someone will pointed out slight suggestion, try to accommodate their needs as much as possible. It’s their apps, satisfy them as much as you can. But! Remember, don’t spent too much improving their needs and stays with the contract or you will over-engineer, just based on their over-request.

7. Provide a task session

If necessary, you can provide the training session with a task session in the end. This will give you information whether the trainee understands the information provided on the training. Make sure to set this beforehand, and include the steps inside the training guide.

8. Question and FAQ session

Give them a chance to throw a question, and answer directly. Make sure your answer is loud and clear. Use these questions to form a FAQ section for other trainee guidelines to use your apps. Or even, to be used as standard guiding to obvious question regarding your app. Also made it simple, and sort it by the chance of occurrence of the question.

At this point, the training would be done and your customer would have the information needed to deliver and use the apps for their proposed needs. Don’t forget to keep in touch with them when your help is needed.

And last, Happy training!