01 · Leadership
Liderar Personas en Equipos IT
For engineers who became leads. Leadership framed through the work the team is shipping.
A series of online courses for IT professionals in Spain that teaches soft skills through the hard skills they already use. I ran the project from research to launch: the problems worth solving, the course format, the curriculums, the teachers and the rollout onto TrainingIT's platform. Four courses launched, and three have been in the catalogue for two years.
What IT teams were missing
Business goal
Open a new course line that brings soft skills into the catalogue without leaving TrainingIT's technical identity: particular skills with a clear synergy with the IT field, so each course sells to HR and holds the attention of the engineer in the room.
What we mean by soft skills
Personal attributes and interpersonal skills that let a person work effectively with others.
Research summary
Method
Desk research on the challenges IT professionals face at work and a needs analysis focused on communication and organisation, followed by interviews with IT professionals, HR professionals and IT company heads.
Participants
IT professionals, who know where the working day breaks down; HR, who see the gaps in reviews and exits; and company heads, who decide what gets funded.
Key finding
Soft skills land with IT professionals when the lesson starts inside a technical situation they recognise, such as a sprint, a review or a deadline, rather than beside it.
Four problems in IT
Communication is crucial in IT, but professionals struggle to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and to collaborate with team members from different backgrounds.
IT professionals juggle heavy workloads, several projects at once and tight deadlines, which leads to stress and overload.
Technology moves fast, so professionals have to keep updating their skills and knowledge to stay current with new tools.
Many tasks and projects run at the same time, which makes it hard to prioritise and allocate time well.
Sources: BMC Blogs, “10 Common Challenges IT Teams Face”; Bryant & Stratton College, “Challenges IT Professionals Face in the Workplace”; InformationWeek, “Top 5 Challenges Facing IT Departments in 2021”; BairesDev, “10 Key Challenges IT Professionals Need to Overcome in 2022”.
The classes each problem called for collapsed into five families. Each was benchmarked against courses already on the market.
Organisation & productivity
Appears in all four problems.
Communication
Stakeholders, teammates and handovers.
Learning how to learn
Keeping up with the pace of new technology.
Leadership
Benchmarks: BAI Formación, Udemy.
Emotional intelligence
Benchmarks: Coursera, OpenWebinars.
At the time, no course on Domestika, Udemy or similar platforms used hard-skill lessons to teach soft skills. The two were sold separately.
The market
Hard-skill courses on one side. Soft-skill courses on the other.
TrainingIT
Soft skills taught inside the hard skills IT professionals already use.
A sceptical room
IT professionals dismiss soft-skills training on sight. The hard-skill frame is what earns their attention.
Urgent versus desirable
Research produces long wish lists. The synthesis had to separate what companies will fund now from what they agree is important.
Teachers who hold both sides
The format needs teachers fluent in the technical context and in the soft skill.
Two buyers, one course
HR signs and the professional attends. Each course has to sell upward and be worth the participant's time.
Strategic opportunity · hard skills as the vehicle
Start in their work
Each session opens on a technical situation the group recognises, such as a review, a retro or an escalation.
Name the soft skill
The soft skill is introduced as what decides how that situation resolves, so it reads as craft rather than HR content.
Practise and carry back
Exercises use the participants' own cases, so what they learn maps onto next week's work.
Hybrid course concepts
Technical skill in agile methods combined with leading people and running projects.
Technical skill in analysing and visualising data combined with storytelling and communication.
Course catalogue · 9 concepts
Needs analysis pointed to communication and organisation first. Each concept pairs the soft skills it develops with the hard skills that carry them, for the IT companies already partnered with TrainingIT.
| # | Course | Soft skills | Hard skills that carry them |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Personal productivity | Time management, self-discipline, personal organisation | Productivity apps, prioritisation techniques such as the Eisenhower matrix |
| 02 | Document management | Attention to detail, time management | Document management systems, archiving and information security policies |
| 03 | Communication skills | Empathy, persuasion, clarity, active listening | Professional writing, presentations, email and video-call tools |
| 04 | Dynamic collaboration | Teamwork, conflict resolution, adaptability | Slack, Microsoft Teams, Scrum and Kanban |
| 05 | Good practice in ICT management | Critical thinking, decision-making | ITIL standards, IT security, systems and network administration |
| 06 | Live Data storytelling | Critical thinking, creativity, communication | Tableau, Power BI, data analysis, basic graphic design |
| 07 | Live Collaboration & problem solving for IT projects | Communication, teamwork, flexibility, creativity | Jira, Scrum, Kanban, project planning and tracking |
| 08 | Project management | Leadership, communication, decision-making | Microsoft Project, PMBOK, PRINCE2, resource and risk management |
| 09 | Live Notion or Trello for productivity | Organisation, time management, collaboration | Advanced Notion or Trello, custom workflows, integrations |
Four courses for soft launch
For engineers who became leads. Leadership framed through the work the team is shipping.
Feedback, clarity and shared goals inside agile ceremonies.
Reading and adjusting team climate, the gap HR raised most often.
Presenting technical decisions, trade-offs and risk to non-technical stakeholders.
Every course targets 20 hours of content in four modules that move from foundations to practice. Where a soft skill is paired with a tool, the modules show how to use both together. Four of the draft syllabi:
M1 · Introduction to productivity
Core concepts, a self-assessment of current productivity and a reading.
M2 · Time management
Eisenhower matrix and Pomodoro, calendars and task managers, then building a personal calendar and task list.
M3 · Personal organisation
GTD and Bullet Journal, the work environment, and putting one method into practice.
M4 · Keeping productive habits
Habit strategies, review and adjustment, and a personal action plan.
20 hours · 4 modules
M1 · Foundations of communication
Why communication matters at work and the main communication models.
M2 · Verbal and non-verbal
Verbal techniques, body language and practice exercises.
M3 · Written communication
Professional writing, clear emails and documents, and practice.
M4 · Active listening and empathy
Listening techniques, empathy and practice exercises.
20 hours · 4 modules
M1 · Foundations of collaboration
Why teamwork matters and collaboration models.
M2 · Digital collaboration tools
Slack and Microsoft Teams, set-up and use, and configuring a shared workspace.
M3 · Collaborative methods
Scrum and Kanban, followed by a simulated agile sprint.
M4 · Conflict and team decisions
Conflict resolution, collaborative decision-making and role-play.
20 hours · 4 modules
M1 · Project management foundations
Key concepts and traditional versus agile methods.
M2 · Essential skills for project leads
Leadership, communication, conflict and decisions, with a simulated project.
M3 · Tools and techniques
Microsoft Project, Asana or Trello, set up and used on a practice project.
M4 · Good practice and evaluation
Risk and quality control, lessons learned and a final project report.
20 hours · 4 modules
Built from scratch with the teacher, module structure included.
An existing course moved onto TrainingIT as it is.
The teacher brings a finished course.
ADDIE
Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation. Slower, but thorough and focused on getting it right from the start.
SAM
Successive Approximation Model. Iterative: the steps repeat until the course converges on its final design.
Both were evaluated for Option A courses, where the structure is set together with the teacher.
Path to integration
Research
Researched the problems most relevant to IT and to the companies buying training, and the classes that answer them with synergy with TrainingIT's catalogue.
Development
Built the classes that best fit those needs, or new courses where none existed, and defined what each needed to run.
Acquisition
Found, selected and managed teachers in Spain for each class, and agreed with each one how their course would be built.
Implementation
Brought the classes onto TrainingIT's platform and ran a September pilot with 5 to 10 courses.
Implemented courses · 4 launched, 3 live for 2 years
Four courses were implemented, and three have now been running on TrainingIT for two years. Each one keeps the format: 20 hours over 6 weeks, online, fully practical, and 100% subsidisable for companies through Fundae.
From catalogue concept 07 · Collaboration & problem solving for IT projects
From catalogue concept 09 · Notion or Trello for productivity
From catalogue concept 06 · Data storytelling
For HR professionals and analysts. Hard skills: HR data analysis and visualisation. Soft skills: data-driven decisions and communicating findings.
Teachers and professionals based in Spain who could teach each course, deliberately avoiding the names already in demand everywhere. Experts could include psychologists, coaches and business leaders alongside technical profiles.
Content
Videos, readings, case studies, infographics and presentations, adding up to 20 hours or as close as possible. Files follow one naming rule, for example DataStoryTelling_clase_1.mov.
Quality check
Every video is transcribed with AI, so errors can be caught without watching every hour of footage.
Platform
Videos are hosted on a private Vimeo and can't be downloaded or watched without access. Materials go into Moodle, and the team makes the web and course banners.
Practice
Simulations, case studies and role-play, with quizzes for instant feedback and self-assessment.
Community
Moodle discussion forums for every course, and live webinars for some.
Pilot
A September pilot with 5 to 10 of the courses, launched as Work Efficiency.
Measures
Completion rate, learner satisfaction and impact on job performance, with surveys after every course.
Continuous improvement
Regular content updates, and new courses added as market trends and needs change.
What I owned
Research & definition
Ran the research, ranked the pain points and turned them into the hard-skill-anchored course format.
Curriculum
Built the curriculums and session structures for four courses, with exercises set inside the participants' technical work.
Teachers & launch
Sourced the teachers, tuned their courses against the format and took them onto the platform.