The single least-funded line on most Maximo rollout budgets is end-user training. The single most-cited reason rollouts under-perform after go-live is that end users were not properly trained. Those two facts have been in tension for as long as Maximo has existed and they remain so in 2026, even with the move to MAS, even with the better UX of Maximo Mobile, even with the AI assistance that increasingly sits next to the screen.
This is a practitioner view of where Maximo training and certification matters in 2026, what we have learned actually moves the needle on rollout success, and where IBM’s published certification paths fit into that.
The training conversation has changed
In the 7.x era, Maximo training was a classroom event before go-live. A consultant flew in, ran sessions for a fortnight, left a deck and a set of recorded videos that nobody watched after the project closed. By month three, half the trained users had moved roles. By month twelve, the system was being used in ways the project never anticipated and the training material was already wrong.
In 2026, three things are different:
- The platform itself is more configurable and the surface a typical user sees is more role-specific. Generic “Maximo training” no longer fits the role-based UI most operators have moved to.
- The mobile and self-service surfaces have expanded the user population from a few hundred desk-based planners to potentially every technician, supervisor and inspector in the organisation. Generic training does not scale to that.
- Certification — both IBM-published and third-party — has matured to the point where there are credible paths for administrators, configurators and increasingly for power-users.
The implication: the right training programme in 2026 is layered, role-based, ongoing, and tied to the system’s actual configuration — not to a generic Maximo course.
Three populations, three different programmes
We split training into three populations and treat each one differently.
End users
The technicians, supervisors, planners, store keepers, inspectors and operations leads who use Maximo every day. The biggest population, the highest impact on operational outcomes, and the one that gets the least attention.
The training that actually works for this population:
- On the device, in the field, with a real work order, supervised by someone the technician trusts. Twenty minutes per technician at induction, ten-minute refreshers when something material changes. This is the principle we set out in the Maximo Mobile rollout guide.
- Role-specific, screen-specific, short. Not a 90-minute video on “the work order lifecycle”. A two-minute clip on “how to capture parts on a job”, embedded in the screen itself.
- Maintained. When the screen changes, the clip changes. This is a content discipline, not a software feature.
- Measured by outcome, not by attendance. The metric is whether the user is completing work on the device and capturing meaningful data — not whether they attended a classroom session.
Certification is rarely meaningful at this level. Rollout success is.
Power-users and configurators
The people inside the customer organisation who maintain the configuration after go-live: the start-centre owner, the data steward, the report builder, the security-group administrator, the integration-monitor. A small population, but the one that decides whether the platform improves over time or drifts.
For this population, formal training and certification matters. IBM publishes role-based learning paths that map to the modern MAS estate; equivalent third-party programmes exist. The combination we see work:
- IBM Learning courses on Maximo Manage administration and the MAS components in use (Monitor, Predict, Health, Visual Inspection, Mobile, the application sub-modules — Renewables, FSM, Real Estate and Facilities).
- Hands-on time on a non-production environment, with a structured programme of tasks rather than free exploration.
- A defined certification path the organisation funds — typically one or two formal certifications per power-user, with refreshers tied to MAS releases.
The IBM Professional Certification programme is the recognised route here. It is not the only credible path — vendor and partner programmes also have value — but it is the one most procurement teams will recognise on a CV.
Administrators and the platform team
The internal IT or platform team responsible for the platform’s health: applying patches, running upgrades, owning integrations, responding to incidents.
For this population, the training conversation is broader than Maximo. It covers OpenShift (for MAS estates), the database platform in use (DB2, Oracle or SQL Server), the identity stack, and the cloud platform under it all. The Maximo-specific certification here is one part of a broader operational competence picture.
What we see work for this population:
- A core team member trained on each of the three pillars: MAS administration, OpenShift / cluster, the database. No single person has to be expert on all three; collectively the team has to be.
- A live runbook practice — incidents are documented, post-mortems are conducted, the runbook is updated. This is more valuable than any classroom course.
- A relationship with the supplier where the platform team observes upgrades, releases and incidents the supplier handles, so they could do them if they had to.
Where training spend actually pays back
In our experience, the training spend with the highest ROI is the smallest of the three: the targeted, on-device, role-specific micro-training for end users. It costs the least to produce, scales the widest, and is the difference between a rollout that lands and one that quietly gets bypassed.
The training spend with the highest individual cost — formal IBM certification for power-users and administrators — is also worthwhile, but it pays back over years, not months. It is the right spend for the people the customer wants to retain.
The training spend with the lowest ROI is the legacy classroom programme: a fortnight of consultant time, a dense deck, a recording archive. We do not recommend it. We do recommend its replacement: short, structured, measured, ongoing.
Certification is not the goal; competence is
The mistake we sometimes see customers make is to treat certification as the deliverable. Three power-users get certified, and the training line on the budget closes. A certification is evidence that someone passed an exam at a point in time. It is not evidence that the person can configure your specific Maximo estate to do what your specific business needs.
The deliverable should be: people who can do the work on the system as it is configured today, who continue to be able to do the work as it changes, and who can support and improve the work for others. Certification is one input to that, not the output of it.
Where we are heading
The training and competence conversation in MAS is starting to merge with the in-product AI assistance conversation. Tools like our own MaxIron Assist put a chat expert next to every end user inside the application, lowering the threshold for “I do not know how to do this” and reducing the load on classroom-style training. AI does not replace formal training for power-users and administrators. It does meaningfully reduce the friction at the end-user level, particularly for occasional users.
A year from now, the training programmes that age well will be the ones that combine formal certification for a small core, on-device micro-training for the broad population, and AI-assisted in-product help for the moments the other two do not cover. That mix is the practitioner’s answer to the perennial question: how much training is enough?
What we run for clients
We do not run a public training course. What we do is build training material into every implementation and operations engagement: role-based screen guides, on-device micro-training, configurator handover documentation, and certification preparation for the customer’s nominated power-users where the customer wants to fund it. It comes out cheaper, lands better, and produces the competence the customer is actually paying for.
If the training conversation has come up on your side and you are wondering where to start, talk to us. It is usually a thirty-minute conversation to land the right answer.