At its final All Hands event, Karsun Solutions celebrated the more than 1400 hours of training, professional development, and certifications earned by its team members in 2020. This incredible accomplishment was driven by the Karsun Innovation Center (KIC) and its newly launched Practice Areas. These employee-centered teams introduced a series of Dojos, Brown Bag, and certification workshops to ensure all teams had the experts they need to Do Extraordinary while Defying Assumptions.
The KIC was first introduced as an in-house Research and Development unit. Later, in 2016, it added Karsun Academy, a professional development program aimed at supporting team member technical certifications. In 2018 it introduced the first of five Practice Areas. These currently include Solution, DevSecOps, Lean, Data, and Development Practice Areas.
These areas span Karsun offerings with a dedicated lead for each and a core set of practice advocates in every delivery program. They also drive excellence through the creation of reusable assets and toolkits, the establishment of guidelines, industry certifications and technology partnerships, and the enablement of active collaboration among employees. It is through these industry partnerships, with vendors like Red Hat, AWS, and StreamSets, that the center offers a full training curriculum designed to familiarize teams with the latest enterprise modernization technologies and solutions.
Subject Matter Experts Share Experience in Multiday Dojos
Karsun Practice Leads introduced Dojos as a format to deliver multiday, hands-on training to delivery teams. These in-depth workshops bring team members up to speed on best practices and emerging methodologies. While initially created as in-person events, the Innovation Center quickly enhanced its digital workplace tool suite, Karsun Konnect, to offer these events in a remote environment.
DevSecOps Practice Adapts Ansible 101 to Virtual Workshop
Karsun is a long-standing Red Hat Ready Partner. Karsun Academy previously hosting multiday in-person workshops led by Red Hat experts. This year the KIC adapted some of this training into an Ansible 101 Digital Dojo. Led by Samir Bham, the Director of the DevSecOps practice, this virtual workshop allowed team members to log in remotely, gain hands-on experience with a subject matter expert all while learning best practices.
Employee to Employee Sharing in Weekly Brown Bags
Brown Bags, hosted by any Karsun team member, spotlights team member expertise in short, one-hour presentations. The training and professional development team introduced these shorter sessions to augment Karsun Academy certification courses. Today, sessions cover a range of professional development topics from new vendor solutions to soft skills.
Lunchtime Workshop Focuses on Migration & Disaster Recovery
Madhu Chellappa, of Karsun’s DevSecOps practice, led one such workshop on Migration and Disaster Recovery. This short, one-hour session discussed a solution using Cloud Endure. This highly automated rehosting solution from AWS simplifies and expedites migration.
Certification Programs Ensure Expert Teams Ready on Day One
Certification programs formed the original backbone of Karsun Academy. This provided employees with industry-standard certifications. Through this program, for instance, the Innovation Center ensured over 40 Karsun team members are AWS certified!
DataOps NoVa Hosts StreamSets Certification Workshop
The Innovation Center also hosts DataOps NoVa through its Data Practice. Members in that Meetup group attended a three-day data engineering workshop from StreamSets alongside Karsun team members. Participants enhanced their data pipelines skills with a combination of vendor-led presentations and hands-on challenges using the StreamSets DataOps platform. After the workshop, most participants had the opportunity to be fully certified as Expert StreamSets Developers.
Karsun Solutions is repeatedly recognized for growth by publications like the Washington Business Journal and Inc. Magazine. Innovation Center Practice Areas ensure team members will continue to Grow with Karsun. These programs in turn create a pipeline of Enterprise Modernization Experts ready to solve difficult government transformation challenges. To learn more about how Karsun’s modern software development, cloud solutions or data solutions complete the form located here.