Guiding product developers to software tool education

Abstract

Due to an increasing complexity of the product development processes at Volvo Cars, where development is iterative with interdependencies of upstream and downstream consumers of product data. It is important to ensure the quality of the product data and to create and use it efficiently. One way of ensuring this is through education. Hence, this study has investigated the software course needs of developers and how developers can be guided to courses in order to ensure quality of product data. The study contains four objectives: (1) An investigation of what software developers use to execute their work tasks. (2) An investigation how developers currently are guided to relevant software courses for their work tasks. (3) An investigation of the developers’ needs regarding guidance to relevant courses. (4) Develop a concept, based on the needs, that guides developers to relevant software courses. The study was carried out in iterations with a Design Thinking approach. Meetings with experts, user interviews and observations and sitemaping have been carried out to research the current state and the user needs. The research of the current state resulted in the definition of two developer types, (Design engineer and GDL) along with recommended courses for each type. Additionally, six channels that guide developers to relevant courses were identified. For two of these channels, sitemaps were created. Three general course overview formats were identified: documents, tables and links. Lastly, three available education formats has been identified: in-person training, eLearnings and instruction material. Furthermore, personas and journey maps were created to define user needs. The research and definition of user needs resulted in three opportunities: increase awareness about courses, enhance the possibility to find specific courses, and enhance exploration of courses. To develop a concept to meet the user needs, brainstorming, idea screening and voting, benchmarking, prototyping, sitemap creation and wireframe creation were carried out. To perform evaluation, interviews and observations were carried. The concept creation and evaluation resulted in a concept for a course platform intended to guide developers to relevant courses. Furthermore, a suggestion of how the platform could be implemented is presented. Lastly, suggestions for further Development is to create a functioning prototype in SharePoint in order to evaluate with additional stakeholders. Furthermore, to address additional user need a suggestion is to develop a standardized course guidance process and investigate the potential to have all courses available as eLearnings.