Contributed By: John Guadagnino and Ken Wood

John Guadagnino
My personal opinion / experience is that there are 2 ways to learn Tivoli:

1. Assisted via professional training
2. Unassisted

Method (1) is much faster, easier, more thorough, robust, and effective in the short run, but requires commitments of time and money (i.e., pay for class, travel to class, time off for class)

Method (2) will require substantial amounts of work on your part, requires that you a) possess or acquire all the media/ documentation for every Tivoli product you may be interested in, and b) have hands-on access to a Tivoli implementation (either at work, or your own personal lab)

In the past 3 or 4 years, I've taken classes for Framework, TEC, DM, and Rules writing (not necessarily in that order). Classes aren't perfect, and of those offered, most are not very deep, but when you're starting from nothing the classes will get you functional far far far far far faster than going it alone.

I've worked with many "application admins" (for various products / technologies, not just Tivoli) who were completely On-the-Job and self-taught (no professional training) and with all other things being equal (overall IT knowledge/experience) these self-taught guys had (and have) a much tougher row to hoe than the people who've gone to classes (i.e., takes them much longer to get up to speed on all things relevant to their core role). Many of them remain at a lower level of functionality, although I've met a few bright stars who managed to claw their way out of the primordial ooze and become very savvy and skillful.

Keep in mind that the above is a) my opinion, and b) based on my own personal experiences. I don't want any flames from people out their who are totally self-taught and consider themselves the cat's meow.

My advice: if you can take classes, then do so. Start with Framework. If classes are out of the picture for the foreseeable future, then get yourself a copy of the Framework manuals and read them thoroughly. I would suggest that you start with the User's guide ... the other books may be too arcane at first since you are relatively unfamiliar with Tivoli. But most importantly, you cannot learn Tivoli without hands-on experience. That is the one statement that I won't back down on ... you must actually use the product to learn it. That's because the product is a very complex and sometimes idiosyncratic environment, and there are things you simply must learn (especially if you intend to be a professional Tivolier in the long run) that aren't covered in books.

And after all that, the tme10 list and its archive provide some of the best specialized Tivoli info on earth.

On the subject of learning the product .... many vendors offer 'developer' deals to technicians like ourselves so that we can legally get free (or low-cost) copies of software for our own personal education and development of skills related to those products (examples: Sun & Oracle). I think it would be in Tivoli's best interests if they found a way to do the same .... I'd love to have a Tivoli lab set up at home ... I have a couple of old Unix workstations, some PC's, and have downloaded Solaris 8 and Oracle 9i, so I would think that IBM/Tivoli should like to expand the user base / technical skill base with relation to their products as well.

Ken Wood
In addition, probably the fastest and most expensive way to learn is via consultants.  They are often more knowledgeable than instructors and can provide one on one.  This would also be at your site, dealing with your problems, issues, etc.

This can be invaluable if starting from architecting to implementation and problem resolution.  However, you need to insure that the transfer of knowledge takes place.  The consultants should understand and agree to this before they come onsite.  You may need different consultants depending on how many different things you want to do.

This will not eliminate all class training but can significantly reduce it.  If planned out appropriately, this can be the quickest and most effective method to come up to speed.  This would mix some of your own self discovery with class and consultants.  If you do this, be careful of the consultants you get. Some are better than others.