Education & Training

Education & Training transforms platform features into practical problem-solving capabilities. It's not about documenting how your platform works - it's about enabling developers to solve real problems using your tools. Effective training reduces the time-to-value for new developers, decreases support burden, and builds the confidence that leads to deeper platform adoption and advocacy.

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Goal

Transform platform features into practical problem-solving capabilities that drive real adoption

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Impact

Accelerate onboarding, reduce support costs, increase feature adoption, create confident advocates

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Success Indicators

Time-to-production, skill progression rates, training completion-to-usage rates

Foundation

Why training that focuses on problem-solving beats feature documentation, and how to think about different learning approaches

1.1

Why Education & Training Matters

When developers can quickly achieve meaningful wins with your platform, they become your most credible advocates. The business impact is measurable: well-designed training accelerates developer onboarding, reduces support costs, increases feature adoption, and creates more sophisticated use cases that drive platform growth and customer expansion.

Business Impact

Accelerate developer onboarding and time-to-first-implementation
Reduce support costs through better self-service enablement
Increase feature adoption and platform utilization depth
Create confident advocates who drive word-of-mouth growth

1.2

Understanding Training Development Categories

Effective training design can help drive better product/platform adoption across your user base through different approaches.

Problem-Solving Focus

Teaching practical application rather than feature documentation

Enables developers to tackle real challenges using your platform
Focuses on "how to build X" rather than "how feature Y works"
Creates immediate practical value and engagement

Persona-Based Learning

Different user types need different training approaches

Recognizes different goals, contexts, and learning preferences
Tailors content for developers vs. program leaders vs. decision-makers
Creates more relevant and engaging learning experiences

Progressive Skill Building

Layering complexity to build confidence and capability

Starts with achievable wins that build confidence
Progressively introduces more complex scenarios
Masters foundational patterns before tackling advanced integrations

Contextual Application

Connecting learning to real-world implementation scenarios

Provides safe environments for experimentation
Uses realistic data, workflows, and constraints
Mirrors actual developer challenges and use cases

Strategy

How to transform platform features into practical problem-solving capabilities, and the acceleration multipliers that make training success drive adoption across all other dimensions

2.1

Cross-Dimension Acceleration Multipliers

Success in one dimension accelerates capabilities in others, while neglecting one creates friction that slows the entire ecosystem.

Community & Advocacy

Community feedback accelerates training development by identifying needs, while successful community members become training contributors, multiplying your content creation velocity.

Developer Experience

Training effectiveness multiplies when developers can easily access tools and environments needed for hands-on learning, reducing friction and accelerating skill development.

Marketplace & Resources

Training drives adoption and demand for reusable resources while successful training "graduates" become key marketplace contributors, accelerating ecosystem growth.

Metrics & Analytics

Training programs provide critical enablement metrics and business value data that accelerate program measurement and optimization cycles.

Program Positioning

Training success stories and time-to-value improvements multiply the impact of ROI arguments with internal stakeholders.

2.2

Key Questions You're Trying to Answer

These questions guide your training strategy and help you focus on what matters most for business impact.

Training Strategy and Design

Who needs to learn your platform, and what specific problems are they trying to solve in their roles?
What's the difference between teaching platform mechanics versus enabling practical, real-world application?
How do different user personas need different training approaches beyond just technical depth?

Learning Effectiveness and Engagement

What foundational skills do users need before they can solve complex, integrated problems?
How do you provide safe environments for experimentation without requiring complex production setup?
What keeps developers engaged through the inevitable frustration points that come with learning new platforms?

Business Impact and Practical Application

Which delivery methods actually lead to skill retention and practical application in real work scenarios?
How do you measure whether training translates to real-world success and business outcomes?
What's the connection between training completion and long-term platform adoption, feature usage, and customer expansion?

Implementation

How to actually build training that drives adoption and avoid the common pitfalls that kill most education programs

3.1

Your Implementation Journey

Training program velocity builds systematically across three distinct stages, each with specific characteristics and strategic focus areas.

Building Momentum

Foundation Building

Start by building trust with key stakeholders and aligning DevRel goals with business priorities. Focus on transparency, early wins, and communicating impact in business terms.

Key Activities:

Create tutorial content focused on solving specific problems rather than just explaining individual features or capabilities. For example, instead of "How to use our API endpoints," create "How to build a customer notification system" that naturally incorporates multiple API calls.
Develop safe sandbox environments where learners can experiment with real-world scenarios without consequences or complex setup. Think hosted environment (where needed) with sample data that enables developers immediately start building rather than spending hours on configuration. Think time to proficiency as a key focus.
Establish immediate feedback mechanisms so learners know not just if their code works, but if they're following best practices and optimizing for real-world constraints. Automated validation that goes beyond "it compiled successfully." If validation can't be automated, consider how they can log/evaluate the output/results and determine their own success.
Align with product and customer success teams to ensure training covers the most important and relevant capabilities for target personas, not just the newest features that are easy to demonstrate. Bonus consideration: You don't have an unlimited training budget, so how are you prioritizing instruction on the right things, aligned to org objectives and customer needs.
Build modular content structure that enables flexible consumption patterns - some developers want comprehensive courses, others need just-in-time learning for specific challenges they're facing right now. Even if it may seem far off, think about the content/course structure you'll want 1 year from now, and how the things you're building now align to that plan.

Success Metrics:

Training completion rates and time-to-completion across different persona types - are people finishing what they start? How often are they bailing and at what point in the training?
Support ticket reduction for topics covered in training programs - does training actually reduce the need for help? Consider how the topics coming into the support channel are feeding into your content planning.
Feature adoption rates among training participants compared to non-participants - does training drive actual platform usage?
Time-to-first-implementation for new developers who complete training versus those who don't

Accelerating

Engagement and Skill Progression

Leverage executive sponsorship to drive cross-functional alignment and collaboration. Expand DevRel's influence by partnering with other teams and sharing business value stories.

Key Activities:

Implement skill progression pathways that guide learners from basic concepts to advanced, integrated use cases. Create clear "next steps" that help developers see the journey from simple tutorials to building production-ready solutions.
Design cohort-based or group learning programs that combine self-paced content with peer interaction, accountability, and collaborative problem-solving. Some developers learn better with social elements and deadlines. This can create a fun accountability and also makes your training into an "event". Consider SWAG/shirts for your most engaged participants. Example: Register for training, post about it and tag 3 friends who you think should register and be eligible to win some branded SWAG!
Create realistic challenge scenarios that mirror actual implementation problems developers face - integration constraints, data quality issues, performance requirements, and business logic complexity. Struggling with an idea for this? Think about a recent customer implementation/story that might make for an easily understood challenge.
Establish community integration that connects training graduates to ongoing peer support, advanced discussions, and opportunities to help newer learners. This creates a pipeline from student to community contributor. Highlight the people who help the most.
Build gamification elements that recognize skill progression, completion achievements, and advanced applications. Badges and certificates that developers can share professionally, creating both motivation and social proof. Bonus Tip: Never underestimate the power of a digital certificate that someone can share on social media. Not only is it free marketing for your training, but when the social feeds of your co-workers are inundated with people posting their certificates, the value/visibility of your efforts is reinforced internally.

Success Metrics:

Advanced skill adoption rates showing progression beyond basic platform usage - are people building more sophisticated solutions? Are they using our newest and best stuff at higher rates?
Community participation rates among training graduates indicating ongoing engagement with the ecosystem
Peer-to-peer help and knowledge sharing volumes within training-connected community spaces
Training-to-production success rates - how many people who complete training actually deploy solutions?
Long-term platform engagement and feature expansion among training participants

Peak Velocity

Self-Sustaining Learning Ecosystem

DevRel becomes a strategic partner in business growth and innovation. You're shaping strategy, driving investment, and mentoring other teams on advocacy and alignment.

Key Activities:

Enable community-contributed training content where experienced users create resources, challenges, and learning paths for others. Your most successful developers become your best teachers because they remember the learning journey. Encourage/reward these contributions as much as possible - because they come with a certain authenticity that is different from a company promoting their own software.
Implement dynamic content optimization based on usage analytics, outcome measurement, and evolving platform capabilities. Which sections do people skip? Where do they get stuck? What real-world scenarios aren't covered yet?
Create certification or achievement systems that provide professional value and recognition beyond just platform knowledge. Credentials that developers can use for career advancement, making your training a resume asset.
Establish long-term impact tracking through success measurement weeks and months after completion - job changes, project successes, increased responsibility, career advancement. Exit surveys (meaning you just finished the training, here's a survey) only measure "did they enjoy it?" - follow up surveys (i.e. 6 months after the training) measure "was it impactful?" - measuring how/if the training influenced the way they use your product/platform.
Develop cross-functional training programs that bridge technical platform skills with business context, project management, and strategic application. Help developers become better advocates for your platform within their organizations and think about how you can help them influence key decision makers.

Success Metrics:

Volume and quality of community-contributed educational content and peer-created learning resources
Long-term business outcomes attributed to training programs - customer expansion, advanced use case adoption, career advancement, customer health, attrition rates
Professional advancement success stories from training participants - promotions, new roles, project leadership
Training content reuse and adaptation across different contexts, industries, and use cases
Platform innovation and advanced implementations driven by well-trained, confident users who push boundaries

Principles

The hard-won lessons that separate successful training programs from the ones that just feel good but don't drive adoption

Problem-solving beats feature documentation

Practical application drives engagement, retention, and real-world success more than comprehensive feature coverage. This is what separates high quality training from documentation.

Safe experimentation builds confidence

Sandbox environments and community editions are crucial for learning complex platforms without fear of breaking production systems. Developers need to feel safe to explore and experiment.

Progressive complexity prevents overwhelm

Successful training builds confidence through achievable wins before introducing advanced concepts. Measure, adjust, re-measure. Don't try to teach everything at once.

Community amplifies learning

Peer interaction and social accountability enhance individual training effectiveness and create support networks for continued growth. Make the experience of learning something new feel like you're part of a larger community going through this together.

Education & Training

Empower Problem Solvers