Success Story: ATV
ATV uses Zenkit successfully to train seminar participants about project management
ATV GmbH is a continuing education company based in Munich. They offer training to unemployed people to improve their skills needed in the German labor market. Their coaching and training specialize in terms of general management skills, including soft skills, project management, and certain fields in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Operating for over 30 years, they are located in five cities with Munich as their headquarters, and have supported more than 30,000 participants successfully. The Executive Director of ATV GmbH, Clemens Weiß, told us that Zenkit is specifically used within their Management Training session as a tool to support seminar participants manage certain theme-based projects. Having collected feedback from their trainers, Clemens shared with us how Zenkit is used in their training and the benefits Zenkit provides to their team!
Munich, Germany
15 full time + 100+ freelance coaches & trainers
Over 2 years
Project management training
“Zenkit makes new work and agile processes a tangible reality.”
Zenkit is a tool ATV GmbH trainers use in a two-week seminar during a six-month period to teach participants new work and agile processes. A typical training session includes around 10-25 members who will be introduced to Zenkit and have the opportunity to try some product features in a relaxing atmosphere. Then Zenkit will be implemented within a pilot project for members to experience how Zenkit really works in context. Afterwards, participants are asked for a retrospective referring to the project management tool and the agile processes. Thus this will enhance their learning and equip them with the necessary knowledge to conduct further work.
Once everyone is onboard, a real project will be carried out by the participants, who can finally apply Zenkit in a decentralized team. The final certificate for the entire seminar will be provided upon the successful results of the project. Additionally, participants will be able to use the tool to practice their learnings among other projects within the entire six-month seminar.
One of the reasons that ATV chose Zenkit as their project management training tool is because of Zenkit‘s intuitive design. They consider Zenkit a modern, appealing, and intuitive tool with a good structured user interface. It is also considered especially suitable for their participants who do not have plenty of time learning a new tool or may have less tech affinity. Clemens told us, “You only need to invest a reasonable amount of time to get familiar with Zenkit‘s functions. With the training provided in the seminar, the beginning step for starting any project can easily be a playful stage for the participants.”
As a result, Zenkit enables quick success for every seminar participant even if they‘re new to the project management tool and methodologies. Clemens definitely brought up a valid point since a short learning curve is a crucial aspect for any organization which is considering introducing a new tool to their members. After all, the goal for using a tool is to help people work smarter instead of hindering their progress.
“Less learning time ensures everyone a playful stage to get started with any project.”
“Zenkit offers a combination of classical and agile project management.”
With rich features and flexibility offered by Zenkit, teams are able to build a workspace that fits their workflow. For teams which need more classical project management, a well-designed gantt chart could be perfect; meanwhile, there are other options such as kanban to enable agile project management as well.
According to their trainers, the combination of classical and agile project management stood out as one of the most helpful elements of Zenkit, and enabled their participants to have the flexibility of a dual approach for project management.
As mentioned, Zenkit was used to train the seminar participants and manage different projects. As one of the project examples, a Zenkit collection was created to manage the documentation of processes including setting up a 3D-printer. The setup included making it ready to print small chips for shopping carts, developing and realizing the various processes from marketing to selling and purchasing chips.
They also told us that Zenkit does not only work as a database where you can manage recorded information and processes easily, but it also gives transparency to the entire project and its process in various ways due to its multiple view options. With Zenkit, the seminar participants are able to view their data in hierarchy view for a good structure, in table view for details, in mind map view for gaining an overview, in calendar interface for date-sensitive items, in Kanban board for viewing their work in progress, and many more.