Mainframe organizations are investing in modernization, but new tools and processes only go so far if people do not have a place to learn and practice.
That was the focus of the second session in the Pop-Up Mainframe Persona Webinar Series, hosted by Planet Mainframe in partnership with Pop-Up Mainframe. The session featured Geoffrey Decker and looked at the practical challenges facing trainers, instructors, onboarding teams, and learners.
Training Requires More Than Slides and Badges
Derek Britton opened with findings from Pop-Up Mainframe’s industry research. More than one-third of surveyed mainframe leaders said they had a critical need for additional z/OS environments, while 79% pointed to skills gaps and inadequate tooling as barriers to progress.
Those findings have clear implications for training. Modernization brings new tools, workflows, and ways of working, but trainers often still rely on shared systems and limited infrastructure support to prepare courses.
Geoffrey Decker, an IBM Z Champion and instructor at Northern Illinois University, emphasized that access to a working environment is not optional.
“It’s critical that when students are learning z/OS or any aspect of mainframe development, that they have a good, solid environment in which to get their hands dirty,” Decker said. “You’re not going to be able to teach anything unless you actually have a valid environment in which to do the work, and one that they can really dig into.”
Decker noted that his students have benefited from access provided through industry and academic programs, but that those arrangements are not always permanent or universally available. Whatever platform is used, he said, it needs to provide what students require to learn COBOL, Assembler, JCL, and other core technologies.
“You can’t learn these things by looking at slides, taking quizzes, and getting badges,” he said. “It’s something that you just have to be able to get into.”
A More Repeatable Approach
Stuart Ashby used a fictional training company, Blue Horizons Mainframe Training, to show where the problems often arise.
Different courses may require different operating system levels, tools, applications, data, and configurations. When multiple classes rely on the same shared environment, conflicts can happen quickly. Rebuilding those environments manually also creates extra work for technical teams.
Pop-Up Mainframe’s FastTrack capability offers another approach. An instructor can create a master training environment and then provision individual copies for students. Each learner starts from the same setup, and the environment can be restored after an exercise, reset after a mistake, or prepared again for the next class.
The environments run real z/OS using IBM technology and can be provisioned on supported Linux infrastructure, including Linux on Z, LinuxONE, and cloud platforms. They can also be shut down when they are no longer needed.
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What the Demo Showed
During the demonstration, Stephen Morgan showed how instructors can use the FastTrack dashboard to select, provision, start, stop, and restore training environments.
The main advantage is consistency. Instead of rebuilding a classroom or coordinating with several technical teams before every course, instructors can begin with a preconfigured environment and make copies available to students as needed.
Each student receives an individual environment, which can be reset without affecting anyone else. That gives learners more freedom to experiment, make mistakes, and keep practicing after the formal training ends.
That point connected directly to Decker’s comments. Students do not simply need access to course materials. They need room to work through problems themselves, try commands, write and compile code, make mistakes, and understand how the system behaves.
For organizations trying to address a skills shortage while also moving modernization work forward, that kind of access matters. It reduces the effort required to prepare training while giving learners the practical experience needed to become capable mainframe professionals.
The takeaway from the session was simple: effective mainframe training depends on access. When environments are easier to provision, reuse, and restore, trainers can spend less time preparing systems and more time helping people learn.
The third and final session in the Persona Series will be on September 22 at 11:00 AM.
Accelerating Mainframe Efficiency: Development and Testing Webinar
September 22 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT
Zoom – Virtual Meeting
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