Industrial training for software engineers

Training software engineers to work in industry is a problem that has traditionally been tackled by the retraining of Computer Scientists, Electrical Engineers and Mathematicians. This initial skills conversion is not, however, a long term solution. The ever increasing rate of change of software technology can very quickly leave engineers out of date. While short term skills training is useful for meeting immediate needs, it does not provide sufficient breadth to keep staff up to date with a rapidly changing discipline. In order to remain competitive there is a need for a longer term mechanism to ensure that software engineers maintain an awareness and understanding of best practice. This paper explains how a variety of training facilities have been combined to provide a coherent education package for software engineers in British Telecom.