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What is technical foundation training?

Technical foundation training is instruction that teaches individuals how to understand, apply and leverage foundational technology concepts. These foundational concepts are important to master as they are the basis and groundwork that drive how technology works. This training is valuable for anyone looking to best use technology in their lives. However, it is especially important for developing tech learners or those looking for a tech career.

Key elements of technical foundation training

The elements and curriculum of technical foundation training can vary because of the overall broad nature of technology itself. Also, the word “foundation” can have many meanings depending on who is using it. However, when designed correctly, it should serve as the next best thing to work experience.

It is important to note this training will not give you the same level of visibility and perspective as a technician that has been working in technology for twenty years. However, it should give you much better visibility and a level of comfort over the many technical learners that do not take any type of technical foundation training. Here are the common areas this important training will cover.

Understand what skills you need to master technology

Understanding the types of technical skills you will need to be successful is a great place to start when learning technical foundations. Many believe technology skills are solely about hard skills. Nothing could be further from the truth. The best technicians master the hard skills to functionally understand how to use technology. However, they also learn the soft skills to work with the people that are using it too.

As a result, a strong technical foundation training will provide you a base understanding of what these skills are, as well as, how to identify them. Finally, the most important skill for you to learn is how to navigate the technology discipline itself.

How to gain technology navigation skills

This type of technical skill is commonly referred to as work experience. It is crucial for those using technology because it helps someone to understand how technology functions and its main components. More importantly, it helps people to navigate technology with an ability to make well-informed choices to achieve their technology goals.

Experienced tech professionals develop these skills over time, but newcomers must learn them from scratch. More importantly, newcomers really need this insight in order to make the best decisions when they don’t have experience to lean on.

This aspect of technical foundation training focuses on teaching the techniques, skills, and methods to gain enough insight to be able to best navigate and make decisions about technology. It helps individuals to better understand and maximize technology, develop technology solutions, and make informed decisions for ongoing learning and progress in lieu of having technical experience.

An overview of the technology skill development process

Once you understand the types of technical skills you will need, the next step is to understand how to best learn them. The better you understand how to develop your technical talent the more efficient and effective you will be at doing it. The technical skill development process does this.

The technical skill development process describes the steps for developing talent and capabilities in technology. This includes for people that want to simply better use technology in their lives or those that want technical careers. A strong technical foundations training will educate people on how to use this process to develop their technical skills and talent.

Learning technology and gaining technical skills in general takes time, often 2-3 years. It really is a marathon and not a sprint. This time is taken first in learning how to navigate tech and understand technical foundations. Then, it takes even more time to become competent in performing technical tasks or specific job roles.

So understanding this development process is important in making decisions about how to learn tech to meet your objectives. Further, the earlier you get strong technical foundation training while you develop the better it will support your ability to make the best decisions. Once you understand the technical skills you need and how to learn them, the next thing in an effective technical foundation training is about technical systems.

An explanation of how technical systems work in technical foundation training

Once you have an understanding of the skills you need and the talent development process, to grasp and best navigate technical foundations you next need to understand how technical systems operate. Technical systems are groups of technologies that work together to deliver one or many human functions. The more functions and interconnected systems the more powerful the overall benefits of the system.

Some of the most recognized systems today are those created by Steve Jobs of Apple and Elon Musk of Tesla. Of course, even one laptop that is running an operating system and a couple desktop applications establishes a system. An effective technical foundation training will teach you about technical systems. This includes what they are, how to recognize them and how they work.

How to use the technology development process

The technology development process is comprised of the steps to develop any type of technology. Note this is different then the technology skill development process we talked about earlier. It can be called many things but most often it is known as the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC). So in technical foundation training this instruction teaches technical learners about this process and how to use it. This includes the development steps for planning, building, and then using any type of technology, application or technical system.

This is really important to understand since technology will always need to be built in some capacity using this process. The good news is that while what you are building will often change, this process and the way to use it properly will not. So this makes it easier to learn and then serve as a strong tool in your technology journey. Yeah!

An understanding of the primary technical foundation elements

Primary technical foundation elements are the largest and most important building blocks that drive technology today. This includes items such as the internet or how technology layers work. So this aspect of foundational technical training teaches you about these very important pieces to the overall technology puzzle.

They are the items that will be used at the base of almost any technical solution that you are learning about, build or want to use. So understanding them can really supercharge your overall visibility and perspective of how to navigate technology as a whole.

Ways to work with tech within a technical foundation training

The ways you can work with tech in your personal life are similar to how to work with them in business. However, in business, these methods are formally defined. A strong technical foundation training will cover these topics to guide you as you continue to learn. They include:

• Architecture Stage – This is where you define the business, functional, and technical requirements that you want a technology solution to meet. Then you architect or design the technical solutions that will meet them. Finally, this also generally includes building the solution to the specifications.
• Operations Stage- Once the solution is working in production, this is the ongoing management and support of a technical solution.
• Compliance Stage– To ensure they are configured properly, implemented technology solutions are audited and reviewed in this stage. Identified issues are fed back into the architecture stage.

How to execute in tech

A strong technical foundation training will teach you how to purchase, design, implement and then support technology. While tech usage in personal life may be ad-hoc, it is often more standardized in business settings. So learning this is important, especially if you want a job in technology.

The Information Technology (IT) group or team generally manages technology in business environments. This team will often be led by an Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

The project management team within the IT group generally manages the purchasing and implementation of technology. This team will use defined practices to manage the scope, schedule and budget of the project.

Once in production, service and support of will often be provided by a help desk ticketing system that provides help services to internal employees or sometimes even customers using the technology.

Confidence that you can do this

So the last item of an effective technical foundation training is more of a side effect. With an understanding of the technology navigation skills you need, the process to develop tech and an understanding of the primary foundational building blocks, you should get visibility and confidence.

Visibility and confidence are the lifeblood of technology success. A strong technical foundation training will provide you with how to use these newly learned skills and techniques. It will also help you gain the confidence to identify and feel great about your next steps forward. Then it will supercharge you as you take these steps into the digital frontier. Most important….and we will start now by telling you ourselves. YOU CAN DO THIS!

Next steps

As mentioned before, there are many aspects to technical foundation training. Further, it is harder to do this in the beginning of your learning journey when you really need these skills the most. Our technical skill development pass is designed to create a supportive environment to help you moving forward with getting the big picture while you succeed on this journey.