The JLL Training and Upskill Program for Our Warehouse Migration to Databricks

Summary

• Comprehensive training: JLL's Databricks Odyssey program successfully onboarded and trained 120 global data analysts and engineers for cloud data lakehouse migration on Databricks Data and AI platform.
• Gamified learning: The program uses a learn-practice-certify model with gamified level-up mechanics that earn points and career pathways, increasing engagement and retention of technical skills.
• Business outcomes: JLL's training approach delivered improved platform efficiency, enhanced data accuracy, and potential cost savings through better Databricks utilization.

The JLL Training and Upskill Program for Our Warehouse Migration to Databricks

Talk by Kristopher Curtis, Global Technology Director, JLL
Databricks Odyssey is JLL’s bespoke training program designed to upskill and prepare data professionals for a new world of data lakehouse. Based on the concepts of learn, practice and certify, participants earn points, moving through five levels by completing activities with business application of Databricks key features. Databricks Odyssey facilitates cloud data warehousing migration by providing best practice frameworks, ensuring efficient use of pay-per-compute platforms. JLL/T Insights and Data fosters a data culture through learning programs that develop in-house talent and create career pathways. Databricks Odyssey offers: JLL-specific hands-on learning Gamified 'level up' approach Practical, applicable skills Benefits include: Improved platform efficiency Enhanced data accuracy and client insights Ongoing professional development Potential cost savings through better utilization
Here's more to explore:
The best data warehouse is a lakehouse: https://www.databricks.com/product/databricks-sql
How to migrate legacy data warehouses: https://www.databricks.com/resources/ebook/migrate-your-legacy-data-warehouse-databricks
See all the product announcements from Data + AI Summit: https://www.databricks.com/events/dataaisummit-2025-announcements

FAQs

What is Databricks Odyssey?

Databricks Odyssey is JLL's bespoke training program designed to upskill data professionals for migration to a cloud data lakehouse, using a learn-practice-certify model with gamified progression through five levels.

How many people did JLL train?

JLL successfully onboarded and transformed 120 global data analysts and engineers across multiple regions through the Databricks Odyssey program for lakehouse migration.

What are the top data warehouse migration solutions?

This video shares JLL's case study evaluating data warehouse migration approaches and selecting the Databricks Data and AI platform for transformation. Migration solutions vary by scale, timeline, and budget constraints. The video emphasizes comprehensive planning and change management.

Who are the leaders in data lakehouse technology?

This video positions the Databricks Data and AI platform as a lakehouse leader combining warehouse and lake capabilities. Industry leadership depends on unified architectures, governance, and performance. The platform's comprehensive approach enables organizations to move beyond traditional trade-offs.

Full transcript

Welcome everyone. This is a story of how we on boarded and transformed 120 global data analysts into data bricks rockstars. In the next 20 minutes, I'll share how JLL, a 200-year-old real estate giant, overcame multiple obstacles and created a gamified learning program that launched our massive data warehouse migration and changed mindsets of our data analysts from no to woe. Dealing with challenges like leadership pressure, reducing project timelines and technology adoption across remote teams, limited budgets, and maintaining business continuity.
This session will show you how we turn those obstacles into opportunities. Welcome to Data Bricks Odyssey, where your people become your greatest technological advantage. Hi, I used to be a marine biologist, but when I moved to London mid-career for a change, it meant less animals and more ocean and more people. I started working with businesses to help people see and understand data. Now I'm back living in Australia and I work as a global BI technology director for JL Technologies.
In my four years working with the client analytics and insights team, my job is to make sure that we support JL clients in their real estate data analysis and decision-making process. Our global team comprises around 120 data analysts and engineers who collectively drive our analytical solutions. My role primarily focuses on how how our team use data and our analytical tech stack, ensuring that we use software effectively and responsibly to produce insights.
I generate value through efficiency. I build and lead strategic programs at each stage that data takes on its journey out into the business. By the end of this session, you'll take away why investing in your people unlocks the potential of your workforce, whether they're just beginning their data bricks journey or existing users, allowing you to maximize the return on both your technology and human investments. JLL is a Fortune 500 company and stands as a global leader in commercial real estate and investment management.
We partner with clients across the full property life cycle from acquisition and development to management and investment in markets worldwide. JLL Technologies formed in 2019 serves as our specialized division delivering software data and expertise that empowers organizations to realize their real estate strategies effectively. Operating in a substantial global workforce in an industry that is rich in tradition. The last few years has seen us pivot towards technological innovation.
We need to be at this frontier to deliver the best service to our clients. It's an extremely exciting time to be working in data. However, with such innovation and business expectations, it's common to encounter data challenges along the way. You can second guess yourself on decisions made. Should we stay on prem or move to the cloud? Is is our data protected? Did we choose the right data platform? Our legacy data warehouses were struggling to handle the increasing volume of data.
Data loads that were starting in the early hours of the morning started to encroach on business time. We needed to meet the business's increasing demand for rapid insights. These technical limitations created quality risks in our service delivery and reputation. How do we take off into this world of data? We knew we had to find the right data lakehouse, but we had an aborted launch with Snowflake. Determined to position ourselves as technology leaders of commercial real estate, we formed a strategic partnership with data bricks.
Our ambitious tech vision and new partnership lifted our capabilities into the stratosphere. We recognized that our people were stuck grounded on Earth. They needed to be part of this transformation. It was essential that we bring our teams along as we ventured into this newly created data universe, ensuring that they could confidently navigate and leverage these advanced capabilities. For companies in one location or one country, this could be achieved in all hands meetings, offsites, workshops to get everyone together and understand the vision of what they need to do.
The challenge for a company as complex as JLL is the geographies of where our people are located. It's not viable to bring a team of global analysts of 120 people together in one location. We couldn't just schedule a series of virtual meetings because the time zones meant 8:00 a. m. for someone in the UK is 5:00 p. m. in Sydney and 3:00 a. m. in New York. There was always one group of people who'd miss out and it was unfair to ask people to join calls during that personal time.
So how do you mobilize and bring a global team together on this technological journey? We needed to design, develop and launch a technology program on a global scale. Our teams of data professionals were from a variety of backgrounds. Some with strong technical coding experience, others more business facing experience. Our program was vital for our tech transformation success. We needed to prepare our analysts for our data warehouse migration without compromising client deliverables.
We required a solution that was geograph geographically scalable across time zones and commercially sensible. Client funded analysts couldn't be pulled off assignments for extended training. The program needed to preserve our collaborative data culture built on trust and knowledge sharing while immediately providing applicable skills. Ultimately, our mission was to create a framework that supported analysts through transformation while maintaining business continuity.
Essentially upgrading our infrastructure without disrupting service. The data bricks odyssey is a gamified training program that guides participants to understand the capability within our new data platform. The purpose of data bricks odyssey is to provide individuals with the knowledge and skills to effectively use data bicks as it's being set up in JLL. Why the theme and the name? This is one of our important change management tips.
Getting people involved early. From the program's inception, we prioritize involving our team in its development, crowdsourcing the program name and theme initiated the change management process organically, encouraging team members to engage with and mentally prepare for the coming transformation. Program names were submitted by people and the top three were voted on by our data community. We got them accepting our program before it was even built because they voted for it.
The creative element also sparks curiosity and breaks up routine, escaping into something different while still relevant for work. Participants start at the rookie level, completing set learning tasks and objectives to earn points. Points are awarded for each activity completed and the number of points awarded is based on the difficulty or the time spent completing the task. Activities are submitted via a form of the completed learning task and that's approved.
Records are updated in our dedicated data table of user activity which populates a leaderboard to create friendly competition amongst peers. Participants move through the five levels in total. Rookie, apprentice, pro, expert, and rockstar. Each new level comes with different tasks and more challenging activities. Users celebrate these level ups. This is the second of our important change management tips. Reinforce the success by sharing their achievement on LinkedIn with their digital badges.
This is a public recognition and people observe how our culture is. We've also enabled and encouraged our entire community from directors, managers, peers to recognize and celebrate these achievements via Microsoft Teams posts, helping build awareness and confidence. This is how to belong and fit in. It's an evolutionary habit of wanting to be part of the tribe. It keeps the program in the front of mind because they see team members of being reward recognized and they haven't yet.
This prompts them to want to do something about that. In exchange in previous gamified learning programs has taught us the importance of embedding a strong learning culture in our data community. Our learning program is centered around three pillars of learning. Learn, apply, and certify. Each pillar has a set of defined activities. Our first pillar is learn. We scoured the datab bricks customer academy to select videos that will be beneficial to our data professionals, focusing their attention on the material which is important for their jobs.
Alongside the valuable data bricks learning content, we've created some internal JL training modules which cover the nuanced implementation of our environments. Getting people ready to develop with specific JL training examples that they can apply in their working day supported by detailed step-by-step technical how-to guides. However, not everyone learns best by simply watching videos or reading documentation. Our second pillar is apply.
We've complemented the learning content with hands-on material which encourages people to complete practical learning by completing data bricks challenges. We believe people learn best by doing. These are relevant to our JLL enterprise deployment and the implementation of our bespoke analytics platform for clients. Azara participants can use a dedicated training environment that we created in a safe and governed way without fear of making mistakes.
With over 50 challenges to be completed, users can test their knowledge to solve different technical exercises created by their peers and submit their answers. As people progress, we encourage them to create new challenges for the community. The final learning pillar is certify. Our vision is for all our data professionals to become certified. We want them to demonstrate their data bricks expertise via external certification and promotion on social networks.
This gives them a formal development goal and demonstrates to potential employees that JLL provides a structured career development pathway using both intrinsic and exttrinsic motivators. This appeals to our diverse audience to engage and participate in the program. Intrinsic motivators are personally driven. The individual wants to understand or find something intellectually stimulating. Exttrinsic motivators involves an external reward.
In this case, the data bricks certifications, our data bricks Odyssey digital badges, stickers, and t-shirts. The program is underpinned by a progress leaderboard. The dashboard gives a visual representation of key information. My current level is shown by the highlighted badge. The activities that I need to do next are below showing what and how many I need to complete to progress to the next level. Sitting below the individual progress is the leaderboard.
The leaderboard shows where all the people are positioned. This is available to all participants to use and measure themselves. Without individual progress and leaderboard, how would people know what they're supposed to be doing? That's our third change management tip. Always give direction on what is next and where the end goal is. Migrations or transformations are tough. Change management is about guiding people through the transition.
When change management doesn't exist, the impact can be big. Without proper guidance through transition, culture breaks down. We all know the saying that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Trust in leadership erodess. Change fatigue becomes the norm and uncertainty brings breeds anxiety amongst team members. Performance metrics suffer as productivity declines while errors multiply lowering the quality of output and stifling innovation.
Perhaps the biggest risk, often overlooked, talent leaves. They take their knowledge and they go elsewhere. These impacts are connected and justifies why change management isn't just a tickbox exercise. It's essential for success. Our program successfully addressed the human element of change management, avoiding potential disruptions while driving positive outcomes in three areas. In professional development, we've maintained strong retention rates and elevated sentiment through our data analyst community, resulting in longer tenure and increased team stability.
By nurturing talent internally and providing clear advance advancement pathways towards data engineering roles, we've significantly reduced substantial cost associated with recruiting technical experts. Environmentally, our training material serves as an authoritative reference point that establishes coding standards and development life cycle best practice. These resources clearly define permission boundaries, giving analysts clarity in what they can and can't configure while embedding governance before widespread platform adoption before to avoid um to prevent avoidable costs.
From an adoption perspective, our bespoke training in creates practical learning experiences that accommodate diverse learning styles and diver and neurodiversity needs by showcasing innovative possibilities and demonstrating improved methodologies. We've influenced migration attitudes, transforming resistance into excitement and engagement with our new data toys. The results of our data odyssey program have been better than expected.
We've achieved remarkable crossf functional participation with nearly equal enrollment between our core team of 89 people and other JLL departments of 79 people despite minimal publicity. Participants have earned 103 databicks academy badges and certifications while submitting over,300 learning activities. It's an average of 14 per person. Our crowdsourced challenge model has thrived, expanding from five initial challenges to a diverse collection of over 50 challenges, spanning various topics and difficulty difficulty levels, fostering community ownership.
The competitive leaderboard has sparked ongoing engagement with the top performer accumulating 3,720 points. Most critically, 94% of our immediate team has completed the data bricks fundamentals training, establishing the essential foundation for our data migration efforts and becoming a standard on boarding requirement for new team members within their first six weeks of joining JLL. For me, the engagement metrics justified the work that we put in to build the program.
The reward was hearing from our analysts directly. Having the feelings of being overwhelmed with this massive change gradually disappear, seeing them change mindsets from this is going to be hard to wow, look what I can do now. This is just the beginning of our journey. The data bricks Odyssey program continues to evolve as we deepen our understanding of use cases and data bricks solutions. We remain committed to keeping our community informed about platform innovation and new capabilities as they emerge.
We extend our sincere appreciation to our JLL Technologies executive sponsors, our product and engineering teams, and our dedicated data bricks account team, and Max Carduna, for their ongoing support in nurturing this growing community. Looking ahead, we're investing in professional development by offering 100 certification vouchers this year to meet our aspirations of having our data community certified. We're transitioning to a community-led model that provides leadership opportunities through regional learning sessions and showcasing projects.
And finally, we hope to expand beyond our current data personas of analyst and engineer towards more advanced territories, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and agentic AI development, creating a comprehensive pathway for continuous technical evolution. We started with bringing our people and technology ambition into alignment. Our people program had to solve several challenges from global locations, time zones, budgets, and culture.
We iterated on what worked well in the past against the learn, apply, and certify framework with an emphasis on learning by doing. We mined the data bricks academy for everything we could, forming the foundation and then adding our own training in material to complement or explain our bespoke instance. We encourage technical experts and aspiring leaders to cont contribute by being part of the program. Building technical challenges for others to learn from removing barriers for change resistance.
We celebrate success across all levels of management for our people reaching milestones and we demonstrate the success of the program with an increased time to productivity enabling the data warehouse migration efforts. So, my three extracts for a successful technology transition, getting people involved early in what you're doing. You may not have all the details figured out, but communicating and allowing people time to process aligns with the first state of change.
Awareness, why the change is being made, what the risk of not changing is, and the most important, what's in it for me. Reinforces success. It starts with the leaders in your team. When effective, you avoid losing momentum from the initial change and prevent slipping back into the old behaviors. Sharing progress also seems to validate those doing the right thing and subtly tells those not engaging that they're being observed.
And finally, guide direction. Often with new software, people are just given access and pretty much allowed to get on with it. This may work with a small audience, but large scale adoption requires a systematic approach. Guided progression means focusing on what's important, making continued progress to the goal. Without that structure, people could become overwhelmed, lost, and disengage. This technology transformation at JL was possible by prioritizing the human element.
Designing an engaging, scalable, and practical training program that brought people along on the journey. By aligning workforce development with ambitious tech goals, JL not only provided a seamless data warehouse migration, but built a culture of participation, learning, and continuous improvement, ensuring the technology investment translated into real business value. Where would your data bricks odyssey take you?

Learn more about the Databricks Data and AI platform.