It is important to keep your AWS team involved in training.
AWS professionals are accustomed to constantly improving their skills and knowledge in order to keep up with the ever-changing AWS landscape. However, how they do this has changed.
The pandemic has reduced the opportunities to learn from and engage with peers. It is important that businesses allow developers, architects, and other parties to meet online to discuss architectural obstacles or re-examine approaches to software problems.
Here are five ways to keep your AWS team engaged with training.
AWS tip #1: Create a quiz show. In the past, I have set up PowerPoint slides with multiple-choice question prominently displayed, just like in an actual AWS exam. This is very easy to organize digitally. Just make sure that the fonts are large enough for a shared screen. To bring up the answers when the group has reached an agreement, you can hide them in the notes section of your slides.
Remember that the Certified Cloud Practitioner exam usually has 60 questions and you have only 60 minutes to answer them. Each question takes approximately one minute to answer. As such, I am usually more flexible with time when running the quiz.
You can also add more time to allow for discussion of possible answers. This is especially useful when everyone is still learning. You can also discuss any verbiage and look at keywords like all, any, cheapest or fastest, managed, etc.
AWS tip #2: Encourage competition. Competition makes things more exciting. I have seen companies make training more attractive by offering inter-departmental awards, such as for the most certificates acquired in a given year.
Winners (or members of a team) can win gift cards or even lunch paid by the company. This type of competition is great for encouraging teamwork and motivating employees to continue learning.
Find out how much you should pay for AWS professionals in your region.
Download the AWS Salary Survey. AWS Training Tip #3: Get AWS to Host a GameDay If you’re a larger company or work with an AWS Solution Architect, you can ask them for help in setting up a training GameDay. This is a great way for colleagues to get hands-on experience with common AWS issues. Anyone interested in organizing their own GameDay can read this AWS blog.
The GameDay’s leader will present an issue for the team to solve. There will be a point scoring system to keep the competition alive.
One example might be to fix a security hole in a VPC or figure out why EC2 instances don’t scale up. It’s a fun, challenging way to look at the more obscure aspects of AWS and figure out why they aren’t working correctly.
I have been involved in two GameDays (and one meetup) and have always learned something, even with my previous experience and certificates.
GameDay AWS training has a real benefit in that it exposes employees to new services and scenarios, and builds employee confidence when approaching unfamiliar problems.
AWS training tip #4 – Promote local meetups. Meetups are a great way for you to meet people with similar interests. They can be focused on a variety of topics such as cloud-based databases, settingup CloudFormation scripts, and best practices for using AWS SAM.
They are especially useful because they allow an individual to learn new things and bring that knowledge back to work to improve a system or function within the company.
Individuals can also gain a better understanding about the various AWS.
