Keeping the Craft and Making New Analysts: The Apprenticeship Problem

All courses / AI Blue / Module 5 / Chapter 23

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

Explain the two halves of the apprenticeship problem and the labels the chapter gives to the evidence
Calculate the entrants a team needs each year from posts, an assumed attrition and converted posts
Design a craft register and a randomised, graded share of unassisted work by activity
Draft an apprenticeship record with stages, permissions, forbidden uses and the attempt-first rule

Key concepts

Rebuilt, not restored: The book's conclusion on the ladder: tier 1 was one way of producing the capabilities investigation requires, and the route is designed anew instead of restoring a tedious queue unchanged.
Craft register: A team-level table in version control: for each task the agents perform or support, how many analysts have demonstrated it without assistance, the delegation now and the minimum able to work it unaided in the rota pool.
Supervision rule: The rule both organisations accept: no class stays at Level 3 Bounded when the people who could work it by hand have gone. The register's minimum governs the delegation.
Attempt first, then ask: The rule for an apprentice and the assistant: during the first six months the apprentice works every core case and alert without the assistant's summary, and asks after making an own attempt.
Graduated responsibility: The apprentice earns authority in stages, each naming what the apprentice may and may not do, starting in a shadow queue where nothing is closed on the apprentice's word.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Interactive exercise 1 · Scenario

One person left who can work the class by hand

Apply the chapter's craft register and its supervision rule.

Interactive exercise 2 · Match

Mechanisms of an apprenticeship route

Match each mechanism of the chapter's apprenticeship route with how it works.

Teaching plan

15 min	Teacher presents the ladder and the missing rung, what the old route taught and what it cost, and the labelled evidence from outside the SOC.
15 min	Pipeline sum: participants redo the table for both organisations with the assumed 10 per cent attrition, then substitute their own figures.
20 min	Four-step debate on whether the junior route is needed, ending with the verdict and what each side accepts.
40 min	Exercise: groups set up the first steps of a craft programme, the register, the unassisted share and an apprenticeship record.
15 min	Plenary on degraded-mode drills as a test of people, and on Hansa Mutual's measured unassisted share of 0.10 against a policy of 0.20.

Discussion

Analysts who choose which cases to work unassisted choose the easy ones. What would random selection with a hidden summary feel like in your team, and how would you introduce it?
The case for calm holds that the old tier 1 was a poor school. What did it teach that a designed route might fail to teach?
Nordvik Region keeps its unassisted share at one in ten because it has no slack, a price accepted knowingly. What makes a price knowingly accepted different from a risk ignored?

Written exercise

Exercise · 40 minutes

Setting up a craft programme

Carry out the first six steps of the practical guide for your team or for Nordvik Region with its trainee post. Build a craft register of at least four tasks the agents perform or support, with the number of people in the rota pool who can work each unaided and the minimum for the current delegation. Do the pipeline sum with your posts and an assumed attrition rate. Set the unassisted share by activity with randomised selection, and the grading of one in four cases within five working days. Name the mentor and protect four hours a week. Write an apprenticeship record with stages, what the apprentice may and may not do at each, the attempt-first rule and the forbidden uses.

Deliverable: A craft register, a pipeline sum, an unassisted-share policy with grading, and an apprenticeship record with stages and forbidden uses.

Your work

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

How does the chapter read the finding that Hansa Mutual's measured unassisted share was 0.10 where its policy sets 0.20?
Show the answer
B. As a finding: a share set in policy and not measured erodes first
The chapter reads the gap as a finding and makes closing it the first plan measure. The lead reports the measured share, not the policy share, and never by name.
Which statement does the chapter label speculation?
Show the answer
C. That the entry rung disappears altogether, so that organisations hire no juniors
Skill decay beside automation is observable outside the SOC; the same in SOC analysts is expected; that organisations stop hiring juniors altogether is speculation and a risk.
Who is the mentor of Nordvik Region's trainee analyst, and why?
Show the answer
A. The second senior analyst, because Karin Lund's time budget contains no mentoring
AIDR-0726 names the second senior analyst and protects four hours a week. Karin Lund's duties are already written into a time budget without mentoring, though the trainee joins her engineering morning once a fortnight.