CEdMA Spring Conference

May 23-24, 2017

MuleSoft.U

All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Richard Huie-Buckius Frances Sink

Introduction

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• Global Director, Training and Certification

• Grew team from 3 – 20

• Very tall

• Certifications and Programs Lead

• Longest serving Muley on team

• Likes cheese

All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Agenda

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1. What was the challenge?

2. What was the solution?

3. How was the program successful?

4. What was innovative?

5. How has it evolved?

6. What are the current challenges?

7. What are the key takeaways?

8. Q / A

Train the world

All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Bill Nye Says:

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All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

What was the challenge?

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• Dramatically enlarge the pool of trained resources

• Dramatically increase the number of certified developers

• eLearning library not adequate for certification

• Extremely technical product

• Change the conversation about the role of Training

Enter…MuleSoft.U

All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Bill Nye Says:

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All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

What was the solution?

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• Free, self-study university-type course (MOOC)

• Identical content (learning objectives, technical content, certification exam) as the paid ILT course to leverage common content

• 20 hours of content: 2-3 hrs/week for 8 weeks

• Peer support

• Weekly homework + incentive

• Automated as much as possible

• Support from LMS (ServiceRocket)

All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Beyond training

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• Developer Relations– MuleSoft Champions Program

• Channel team– Evangelized MuleSoft.U as a way to ramp resources

• Marketing – Promoted MuleSoft.U as a means to achieve Certification

• IT– Trial account extension

FTW

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Bill Nye Says:

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All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Key successes

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• “Added a zero” to System Integrator & independent devs trained

• Modest cost to us of ~$45 x 6,000 students in 2016

• Systems and support model scaled surprisingly well

• Generally ILT sales weren’t undermined badly

• Feedback and surveys were extremely positive

• High completion for those who do Week 1, BUT high % don’t even do Week 1

• MuleSoft Certification now “table stakes” for customers & partners

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By the numbers

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* Did 10x in 2 years measured from May 2015 to May 2017

Measure 2014 Actuals

2015 Actuals

2016 Actuals

2017 Goals

Developers Trained* 1,200 5,000 10,000 20,000

Developers Certified 500 1,500 3,900 7,000

Training Sales S(2014) +93% YoY +82% YoY +71% YoYCertification Rate(= Completion) 35-40% of those who play Week 1 video

Mode Split ~60% of students take MOOC / ~40% take ILT

And now for something completely different!

All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Bill Nye Says:

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All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Innovative Format

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• We found no industry examples of self-study like this:

– Extremely technical/complex/long yet high quality learner experience– Open to any developer globally and virtually unlimited in capacity– Fully automated and released over a multi-week cohorted schedule– Completely free including certification– Using peer support– Leveraging our existing ILT content, LMS, and lab systems– Designed not to compete heavily with our paid training business

• We couldn’t see e-Learning working for 20-28 hrs. of critical content

All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Training Impact

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• We continue to increase training sales despite making great free training available to the world

– Clever scheduling maintained our core customer ILT sales– Free basic training leads to multiple other types of sales

• Highly visible skill enablement impact on customer success

• Thousands of sales leads + prospect development

• Dramatic increase of numbers and closeness of developer ecosystem

Change is a good thing

All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Bill Nye Says:

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All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

How has it evolved over time?

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• Metrics more sophisticated– Developers trained– Training days

• Certification focused on verifying necessary resource skills vs. achieving minimal acceptable number of developers certified

• Perception of offering has shifted

• Added a new class: Introducing API-led Connectivity– Developers– Managers

• Learner interface

• LMS performance tuning

• Certification perks

Ugh. These guys.

All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Bill Nye Says:

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All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

What are the current challenges?

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• Relentless protest from Channel team about 8-week duration and monthly start

• No automated way to assess progress details

• Large number of enrollees that don’t start the course

• We don’t actually grade homework

• Scalable way to add more access to live experts

• Main certification is unproctored and only verifying classroom skills

• Only we can generate reports and some are very manual

Where do we go from here?

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Bill Nye Says:

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All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Future directions

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• New packages that develop experts in the partner or customer’s organization for increasing support and learning impact

• A few new courses in MuleSoft.U = free MOOC format

• New accelerated schedule options—both duration and frequency

• Proctored certification, that hopefully eventually verifies project readiness

• How to balance P&L if becomes significantly easier to avoid paid ILT

Now we know.

All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

Bill Nye Says:

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All contents © MuleSoft Inc.

What are the key takeaways?

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• Anything is possible if people don’t sleep!

• Memory is short

• Partnerships with other teams and your LMS are critical

• Complex symphony of factors and actions = success

• Crowd-sourcing works

• Student experience at forefront

• Audacious, inspiring goals (BHAG)

• Free offerings are tricky

Q/A

Thank you