Deliberate similarity between the room and the job

The closer the training environment resembles the working one, the less translation the learner has to do alone.

Every difference between where a skill is practised and where it is used imposes a translation cost, and that cost is paid by the learner at the worst possible moment, on their first real attempt, under time pressure, alone. Different software version, different forms, different terminology for the same step, different physical arrangement, different noise. Each one is small. Collectively they mean the person is not performing a rehearsed action, they are improvising an approximation of one, and improvisation under pressure tends to fall back on whatever was habitual before.

Reducing those differences is one of the cheapest available improvements and one of the most often skipped, because it requires the designer to go and look. Use the organisation's own documents rather than generic samples. Use the terminology people actually say, including the local terms that are technically wrong. Where a system is involved, use the version installed, not the current release. Where the work is physical, use the equipment in the state it is normally in, which is to say worn, partly labelled and slightly wrong. None of this is glamorous and all of it removes friction at the point that matters.

The limit is worth stating plainly. Similarity of surface helps, but similarity of the decision matters more. A rehearsal that uses the right forms while removing the judgement is worse than one that uses generic forms while preserving it. The aim is not a replica. It is that when the person meets the real situation, enough of it is recognisable that they know which of the things they practised applies. Recognition is the part that fails first, and it is the part that surface similarity protects.