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How it works - AWS Training

How it works

Team Skills Planner follows one flow from goal to assigned training:

  • Goal — You describe what your organization is working toward, or upload documents that describe it.

  • Roles — Team Skills Planner proposes the roles involved in achieving the goal.

  • Job tasks — For each role, it selects the job tasks, grouped by domain, that are most relevant to the goal.

  • Baseline (optional) — Your team takes a short skill check against the selected job tasks.

  • Recommendations — Team Skills Planner recommends training that targets the job tasks your team hasn’t yet covered.

  • Assignment and tracking — You assign the plan, self-paced or as a cohort, and track progress toward the goal.

What is a goal?

A goal is a business outcome your organization wants to achieve, for example, "Migrate critical applications to AWS while meeting resilience and security requirements" or "Upskill our machine learning engineers for generative AI." Each goal includes a description and the reasoning ("why") behind it, and carries one or more roles.

How roles map to a goal

Roles represent the people whose skills the goal depends on. For example, a cloud migration goal might include a Solutions Architect role (owning migration approaches and resilient target designs) and a Cloud Operations Engineer role (owning monitoring, automated recovery, backup and restore, and hybrid connectivity).

How job tasks define what is measured

Each role is organized into domains, and each domain contains job tasks: the specific, observable work a person in that role performs. For example, under the domain Resilient architecture design, a Solutions Architect’s job tasks might include designing a Multi-AZ architecture, choosing disaster recovery (DR) strategy based on recovery objectives, and determining security controls. The job tasks you include define what the baseline assesses and what the training plan targets.

Where roles and job tasks come from

You describe goals in your own words, so goals aren’t limited to a list. Team Skills Planner proposes roles from its library of more than 25 roles. When a role isn’t an exact match, it suggests the closest role from its library for you to confirm or reject.

The Team Skills Planner library includes roles across the following domains:

  • Architecture and Development (such as Cloud Enterprise Architect or Solutions Architect)

  • Cloud Operations and Infrastructure (such as DevOps Engineer or SAP on AWS Specialist)

  • Data and Analytics (such as Data Engineer or Data Scientist)

  • AI and Machine Learning (such as Agentic AI Developer or Machine Learning Engineer)

  • Security and Compliance (such as Security Architect or Security Engineer)

  • Product and Delivery Management (such as Product, Program, or Project Manager)

  • Business and Leadership (such as Finance, HR, or People leader)

Key terms and definitions

  • Covered — A job task is covered when enough of the group passed it in the baseline.

  • Evidence level — How much baseline data supports a result: Strong, Moderate, Limited, or Not measured.

  • Training area — A group of recommended training that covers related job tasks.

  • Access type — Whether a training item is free, included with AWS Skill Builder Team Subscription, or purchased separately.

  • Skill validation — Training that lets learners show what they’ve learned, such as microcredentials.

How recommendations are produced

If you run a baseline, Team Skills Planner builds the plan from the job tasks the baseline shows your team hasn’t yet covered. For example, if the group covers 14 of 80 selected job tasks, the plan is built from the remaining 66. If you skip the baseline, recommendations are generated from the saved role, domain, and job task scope, assuming a Beginner level. You can run a baseline later to refine the plan if you haven’t assigned learners yet.

What stays in your control and what you can change

  • Nothing is sent to learners until you send a baseline link or assign training.

  • Before a baseline starts, you can rename the goal, rewrite its description, and add, edit, remove roles and job tasks, and make changes to the training plan.

  • After you choose Save and a baseline starts, you can’t edit or change the goal, its roles, or its job tasks, but you can still change the training plan.

  • Recommended training is pre-selected, and you can keep refining the training plan until you assign learners. After you assign learners, you can’t change the training plan.