training_needs_analysis v1.0.0

name: training_needs_analysis description: Run a full training needs analysis: define the performance gap, interview sponsors and performers, pull performance data, measure skills gaps on a fixed scale, diagnose whether the cause needs training or a non-training fix, rank gaps by priority, and produce a costed, owned recommendation report. Use when someone asks for a training needs analysis or assessment, a skills gap analysis, help deciding what training is actually needed, or a diagnosis of why a team is underperforming before training budget gets spent.

Training Needs Analysis

Purpose

Find out what performance is required, what performance exists, what causes the difference, and what to do about it, in that order. The output is a prioritized set of training and non-training recommendations tied to a business outcome, with owners, costs, and a way to check whether the fix worked. A list of course titles is not an analysis.

The discipline that matters most: training is one possible fix, and it is checked after the cheaper causes. A request for training is a symptom report, not a diagnosis.

Workflow

1. Frame the problem before collecting anything

• Get the sponsor to name the business outcome that is off target, by how much, and since when. Write the performance gap in observable terms: "Reports take 3 reviews to pass; the standard is 1" beats "report quality is poor."
• Apply the worth test: what does the gap cost per month in rework, delay, errors, lost sales, or risk? If nobody can name a cost and the gap is small, say so and stop. Not every gap is worth an analysis.
• Agree the scope in writing: which roles, which tasks, which sites, and the decision date. Note what is out of scope.
• Ask the sponsor the hard question early: if the analysis finds training is not the fix, will they act on that? Record the answer.

2. Analyze at three levels

Work top down so individual plans only get built for gaps that matter.

• Organization: Which goals, strategies, and upcoming changes (new systems, new products, new rules) create new performance requirements? Where should effort go first?
• Task: For each role in scope, list the tasks that carry the outcome, the standard for each task, and the knowledge, skills, and attitudes each task requires. Use job documentation plus a top performer, because documents alone miss the judgment calls.
• Person: Compare each person or group against the task standard. Decide who needs what, and who needs nothing. Sending everyone to training when a third of the team needs it wastes money and signals that the analysis was decoration.

3. Collect evidence from at least two source types

Use the guides in references/interview-guides.md.

• Sponsor interview: outcome, cost of the gap, what changed, what was already tried.
• Performer interviews: walk the task step by step, find where it breaks, ask for the last time it went wrong.
• Top performer interview: extract the real standard and a fast way to test for it.
• Observation against a checklist built from the standard.
• Performance data pulled before interviews where possible: error and rework rates, cycle time, complaints, audit findings, change dates lined up against the trend.

Rule: one source is a claim, two agreeing sources are a finding. Where sources conflict, report the conflict.

4. Measure the gaps

Use the scale and evidence hierarchy in references/gap-measurement.md.

• Rate required and current proficiency 0 to 5 per skill, same anchors for both, current rated from the strongest evidence available.
• Score and rank every gap with the tool:

bash
python3 ~/workspace/skills/training-needs-analysis/bin/gap_tool.py --sample > gaps.csv
# edit gaps.csv with your measured rows, then:
python3 ~/workspace/skills/training-needs-analysis/bin/gap_tool.py gaps.csv
python3 ~/workspace/skills/training-needs-analysis/bin/gap_tool.py gaps.csv --format json

• The tool ranks by gap size, criticality, and people affected, flags the priority band, and routes each gap to training, a non-training fix, or diagnose-first based on the cause label you supply. It does not invent the cause. That comes from step 5.

5. Diagnose the cause of each gap

Use references/cause-diagnosis.md. For each measured gap:

• Run the skill test: could they do it if their job depended on it right now? Did they do it before? Is it done often enough to stay fluent?
• Check the environment before the person: information and feedback, tools and resources, incentives and consequences. Then knowledge, capacity, motives, in that order.
• Label each gap with one cause: knowledge, information, tools, incentives, capacity, motives, process, or unknown. Unknown is honest. It gets a named owner and a date for finishing the diagnosis, not a guess.
• Feed the labels back into the gap tool so the ranking and the routing agree.

6. Prioritize and build the recommendation set

Rank on four factors, and show your working:

• Risk: compliance, safety, or legal exposure jumps the queue regardless of score.
• Impact: size of the gap times criticality times people affected (the tool score).
• Cost of delay: what another quarter of the gap costs.
• Cost and speed of the fix: a job aid shipped this month can outrank a course shipped next quarter for the same gap.

For each priority gap, recommend one primary fix: training, job aid or checklist, feedback loop, tools or access fix, process redesign, incentive change, reassignment, hiring, or a combination with the order spelled out. Non-training fixes that unblock performance come before training on the same gap.

For training recommendations, specify: audience (named roles, not "all staff"), the task standard the training must produce, format matched to the gap (practice-heavy for skills, reference material for rare tasks), and how proficiency will be checked at the end.

7. Plan the check before anyone builds anything

Decide now how each fix will be judged, using the Kirkpatrick levels as a menu, not a mandate:

• Level 1 Reaction and Level 2 Learning: cheap, useful for delivery quality and knowledge checks. Never report these as proof of impact.
• Level 3 Behavior: is the work itself different 60 to 90 days later? Measure with the same evidence type used in step 4.
• Level 4 Results: did the business metric from step 1 move?
• ROI (Phillips Level 5): reserve for expensive or contested programs. Convert the Level 4 impact to money, isolate the program effect from other changes as honestly as the data allows, tabulate fully loaded costs, and compute ROI (%) = net program benefits / program costs x 100.

Proportionality rule: the cost of measuring should stay well under the cost of the fix. Most fixes get Levels 1 to 3 and a re-measured gap score. That re-measurement is the core proof: gap before, gap after, same scale.

8. Write the report and get decisions

Deliver the report (see Output Contract), walk the sponsor through it, and get an explicit decision per recommendation: accept, modify, or reject, with the reason recorded. A report nobody decides on is a cost, not an analysis.

Output Contract

The deliverable is one report with these sections:

1. Summary: the gap in one paragraph, the top 3 recommendations, total estimated cost, and the decision needed.
2. Problem framing: business outcome, current vs required performance, cost of the gap, scope.
3. Method: sources used, who was interviewed, what data was pulled, dates, and the rating scale used.
4. Findings: measured gaps in a table (skill, required, current, gap, people affected, evidence source), plus findings that are not skills gaps.
5. Cause diagnosis: one cause label per gap, with the test or evidence behind each label.
6. Recommendations: ranked table with fix type, audience, owner, estimated cost, timeline, and the metric that will show it worked.
7. Non-training fixes: listed separately and scheduled before dependent training.
8. Evaluation plan: which level per fix, when re-measurement happens, who owns it.
9. Risks and open questions: unknowns, conflicting evidence, and what would change the recommendations.

Supporting files delivered with the report: the scored gaps CSV and the tool output, so the sponsor can re-rank with different criticality ratings and see what changes.

Operating Rules

• Never recommend training for a gap whose cause has not been diagnosed. If time forces a recommendation anyway, label it provisional and name the diagnostic step still owed.
• Never invent numbers. Every figure in the report traces to a source the report names: a metric, a work sample, an interview, or a rating with a named rater. Unverifiable claims get cut or labeled as opinion.
• Self-assessment alone never proves a gap. Pair it with work evidence or label the finding as perceived need.
• Protect interviewees. Report performer findings in aggregate or by role. A needs analysis that gets people punished for honesty will never get honest data again.
• Watch for the classic failure modes: the request names a course before a gap; the same training ran before and the gap did not move; trained and untrained staff show the same gap; the gap dates to a system or process change. Each one points away from training as the first fix.
• Re-run the analysis on a cycle: after a major fix lands, after a system or strategy change, and at least annually for roles tied to compliance or safety.
• Keep the style plain in everything written for stakeholders. State findings as facts with sources, recommendations as decisions with owners, and uncertainty as uncertainty.