by Site Staff
December 20, 2005
In his role as director of technical development for EDS, Keith Bridges administers the company’s Skill Enhancement Fast Tracks (SEFT) program, which is aligned to central technologies like applications development, enterprise storage, network security and desktop support. Since the initiative was rolled out, approximately 40,000 people have voluntarily enrolled in at least one SEFT course, and more than 16,000 individuals worldwide registered to take SEFT-related programs.
Bridges also runs the Technical Excellence Program (TEP) and the TEP Immersion Workshop, which teaches employees about EDS’ organization and culture, engineering methods and processes, technology direction, diversity, quality, intellectual property and customer service.
To deliver learning to the EDS workforce, Bridges employs a suite of modalities that includes Web-based courses, online simulations, virtual classrooms, coaching and mentoring, and conventional instructor-led offerings. This system involved garnering support from senior members of the executive committee, as well as cultivating an advisory team comprised of top thought leaders. But Bridges hasn’t limited his plans to internal colleagues: To make sure EDS employees have access to relevant, engaging and user-friendly learning, he has assembled an all-star team of corporate partners.
For instance, the SEFT program pulls together a broad range of learning assets from a variety of vendors to form a cohesive curriculum for the organization’s multi-year plan. SEFT features several registration and access points for resources like Thomson NETg courses on the Internet, virtual labs from ToolWire OnDemand, Safari Tech Books Online and Prometric exam vouchers. In addition, partners such as Microsoft, Cisco, Sun, Oracle, Dell and SAP provide EDS workers with discounted training, test vouchers, consulting and other professional development aids.
Another example of innovative partnership includes the TEP Immersion Workshop, a stand-alone, instructor-led class designed for EDS’ entire technical employee population— more than 90,000 people in all. This course was piloted with Southern Methodist University.