Course Overview

CompTIA Project+ gives IT Pros the basic concepts to successfully manage small to medium sized projects. CompTIA Project+ is ideal for IT professionals who need to manage smaller, less complex projects as part of their other job duties but still have foundational project management skills. Project+ is versatile because it covers essential project management concepts beyond the scope of just one methodology or framework.  

This five-day instructor led course will provide delegates with the essential knowledge and skills to either manage a project or be an effective, valuable member of the project team. It covers the fundamental steps in any project lifecycle and also addresses the necessary people skills such as effective negotiation, conflict resolution, leadership and team building.

Course Objectives

• Plan, baseline and control a project effectively.
• Understand how to identify, manage and control change throughout a project.
• Have an awareness of estimating and managing pitfalls.
• Understand methods of identifying and controlling risks.
• Pick up essential tools and disciplines.
• Make successful cost/schedule/performance trade-offs.
• Understand quality management and customer expectation management.
• Identify and control risks.
• Know why, when and how to report progress.
• Create schedules, manage resources, track and control project plans using Microsoft Project.
• Effectively lead & develop a project team.
• Communicate effectively and carry out dynamic presentations.
• Get win-win outcomes through assertiveness, empathy and principled negotiations.
• Practice principled negotiation and conflict resolution.

Course Content

What is a project and project management?

• Skills needed for successful project management
• The definition of a project
• Stakeholders

Why do projects fail?

• Reviewing project failure

The project lifecycle

• Examining lifecycles
• Why is the lifecycle important?

Managing the project

• Project Scoping
• The Work Breakdown Structure
• Risk Management
• Vendor management
• Successful estimating and cost management
• Earned value
• Scheduling (Microsoft Project)
• Resources, tracking & reporting (Microsoft Project)
• Change management
• Project tracking and control
• Project reporting and communication
• Project completion

Interpersonal skills in project management

• Communication and negotiation
• Conflict resolution, skills practice & action plan
• Recruitment & selection
• Leadership
• Team development
• Presentation, assertiveness & empathy skills
• Performance management & principled negotiation

Course Overview

Do you have the facilitation skills needed to support a working group to collaborate effectively and reach their desired outcomes?

By attending the Agile Coaching Skills – Certified Facilitator (ACS-CF) course you will explore what it means to embrace a facilitation mindset and how you can foster the perfect conditions for creativity, collaboration and innovation. Attendees will discover a diverse range of models, tools, and visual techniques aimed at enriching their facilitation skills. Through engaging in fun, interactive exercises, participants will gain hands-on experience and receive valuable feedback to further refine their facilitation stance.

Completing this course is also a way forward on the path for those who want to become Certified Agile Coaches.

Course Objectives

Discover what a facilitator is and what they do
Practice the mindset of a neutral facilitator
Learn how to facilitate teams through conflict
Understand the needs of different teams
Gain social and self-awareness by exploring Emotional Intelligence
Gain visual thinking, active listening and storytelling skills
Apply the skillset before, during, and after a facilitation event

Course Content

Throughout the course all participants will have the opportunity to demonstrate their facilitation skills in a safe and fun environment, offering opportunities for feedback and growth.

Part 1: Setting the stage and defining facilitation- You will explore the purpose of facilitation, the facilitation mindset and core competencies.

Part 2: Understanding Group’s Context and Needs – You will be introduced to the process of facilitation and how to set conditions that foster Psychological Safety.

Part 3: Agile Framework Values and Principles- You will explore the Scrum Events and how effective facilitation can lead to successful outcomes.

Part 4: The Orientation of the Facilitator-From the Front- You will discover the benefits of divergent, emergent and convergent techniques before embarking on visual thinking and storytelling exercises designed to enhance your communication skills.

Part 5: The Orientation of the Facilitator-From the Back- You will be introduced to active listening techniques that will enhance your ability to understand and respond to the needs of a group, as well as how to receive and deliver feedback constructively.

Part 6: The Orientation of the Facilitator-From the Inside- You will be presented with the 4 dimensions of Emotional Intelligence, how to reflect on your emotions, as well as recognize and influence the emotions of those around you.

Part 7: Co-Facilitation- You will be introduced to the blend of practical and learning-enriching benefits co-facilitation can offer in the delivery of effective facilitation.

Part 8: Facilitating through Conflict- You will gain insight into group dynamics and learn strategies to constructively manage conflicts that may arise during facilitation sessions.

Part 9: Forwarding the action- You will identify effective ways to act on and implement agreed-upon outcomes, including the need to retrospect and identify measures for success

Course Overview

Leading a team successfully takes a special set of skills. Our Team Leadership course covers positive communication, time management, leading a team through change, how to lead and empower virtual teams and more. The course counts towards the BCS (ISEB) Advanced International Diploma in Business Analysis.

Course Objectives

If you’re leading a team in a high performance, fast changing environment you need to have the fundamental knowledge, skills and behaviours to help you succeed.

This Team Leadership course gives you these skills, focusing on the key areas of self-awareness and participative leadership. You will also learn how to use positive communication and to manage time and priorities. Finally, the course gives you the understanding, tools and techniques you need to build a high performing team and lead your team through change. 

The final part of the course, designed in response to the recent increase in home working, focuses on leading, empowering virtual teams and looking after the health and well-being of remote workers.

Presented to you by our specialist management training partner, Skillsshift. Each of their expert training consultants brings substantial management and team leadership experience to the programme.

Course Content

During this course, you will cover:

Introducing Leadership & Management

• Definitions of leadership and management
• Management behaviours – why they matter
• Role & responsibilities of a team leader
• Leadership styles, behaviours & traits
• Action centred leadership
• Leading by example

Self-awareness & Emotional Intelligence

• Understand others’ experience of us
• Gaining and using feedback to develop as a leader
• Concept of EQ
• Emotional intelligence competencies
• Develop management strategies

Participative Leadership

• Directive and non-directive styles of management
• Team engagement, motivation, development, and empowerment
• Situational Leadership
• The do’s and don’ts of delegation

Positive Communication

• Building trust and respect
• Behaviour/Impact Cycle
• Voice, body language & words
• Communication styles: Assertive, Aggressive, Passive

Building High Performing Teams

• Definition of ‘performance’
• Team leader’s role in developing high performance
• Setting effective goals, objectives & measures
• Giving performance feedback
• Coaching for performance
• Dealing with under-performance
• Handling difficult conversations

Managing Time & Priorities

• Identifying priorities
• Managing your time effectively
• Making decisions & delegating

Leading Teams Through Change

• Understanding the effects of change on a team
• The Change Curve
• Communicating during change
• Planning and monitoring the implementation of change

Managing a Virtual and Remote Teams

• The Hybrid Workplace
• Using key best-practice models in a remote environment
• Communication strategies
• Empowerment, trust, motivation and performance
• Health and well-being

Course Overview

The oral examination lasts for approximately 50 minutes and the candidate is required to demonstrate that they can put the competencies gained in the written examinations into a coherent context. Each candidate must also demonstrate the interpersonal skills required to function effectively as a business analyst.

Course Content

The link below is to the latest version of the BCS International Diploma in Business Analysis Syllabus.

Download latest BCS syllabus from the BCS website

Course Overview

An introduction to the essential approaches and concepts involved in enterprise, business, data, applications, software and infrastructure architecture.

Course Objectives

This training course on architecture concepts, introduces you to essential approaches and concepts involved in enterprise, business, data, applications, software and infrastructure architecture.

“This foundation certification provides an introduction to the main aims and concepts of architecture and explores the different subdomains of enterprise architecture.” (BCS Syllabus)

Presented to you by one of the expert training consultants pictured below, each member of our Architecture Concepts training team brings their professional knowledge and experience to this training course.

Course Content

Fundamentals of architecture: concepts

Meaning and levels of architecture

Sub-domains of enterprise architecture

Architecture descriptions

Role of the architect

Gap analysis

Fundamentals of architecture: approaches 

Architecture drivers

Architecture standards and frameworks

Governance, risk and compliance

Business architecture

Objectives of business architecture

Types of application

Key artefacts

Key activities

Cross-referencing models with grids and matrices

Structure and behaviour of applications in a business

Data architecture

Data, information and metadata

Data states and lifecycles

Objectives of data architecture

Key artefacts

Key activities

Structure and behaviour of a business system

Infrastructure architecture

Objectives of infrastructure architecture

Key artefacts

Key activities

Software architecture

Objectives of software architecture 

Key artefacts

Key activities

System modelling techniques

APIs

Security architecture

Objectives of security architecture 

Key concepts in data, applications and infrastructure architectures

Key artefacts

Key activities

Legislation and professional standards

Solution architecture

Objectives of solution architecture

Key artefacts

Key activities

Solution requirements

Solution architecture lifecycle

Stakeholder categories

Applying architectures holistically

Cross-referencing architecture 

Configuration management of architecture

Realising architecture

Course Overview

This workshop will help you to feel comfortable with saying “no”, without feeling guilty and to speak up in a confident and effective manner. Learn to distinguish between the three basic positions: passive, assertive and aggressive.

Course Objectives

After the workshop, you will be able to:

• Express what you want and assert your rights.
• Prevent misunderstandings and conflicts.
• Overcome self-defeating behaviours.
• Improve the quality of your interactions with others.

Course Overview

Many IT organizations are struggling to deliver quality services. Despite the massive investment in training, ITSM improvement initiatives are failing to deliver the hoped for value. The services are too unpredictable, unrepeatable, expensive and pose unacceptable business risks. The IT organization is still not Customer or Service focused. This simulation will help translate ITSM theory into practice, create buy-in and capture concrete improvement actions, helping to realize a customer focused culture and improve service quality.

This Apollo 13 Simulation Game will help:

• Improve your ITSM performance
• Increase Customer and Service Focus
• Get more out your ITSM/ITIL training
• Learn how improve Processes to realize demonstrated value and reduce business risk

 Do you recognize this?

With the growing importance of IT to all organizations ITSM is becoming a strategic capability. Many organizations have adopted and invested heavily in ITSM best practice frameworks such as ITIL. Many are struggling and are not achieving the hoped for value, worse still their lack of ITSM capabilities are presenting a risk to their business. Despite the massive investments in ITSM training and certification we still struggle to translate the theory into practice and translate the ITSM knowledge into results.

• Duration of the simulation 1 day
• Number of participants 8 – 12

Course Objectives

The learning objectives are dependent upon what your organization is trying to achieve, where you are on your ITSM journey and the problems and issues you are trying to solve. These are some of the objectives achieved during this training:

• Learn how to apply ITSM best practices and learn the essence of ITSM;
• Learn how to measure and improve your performance;
• Learn how to stay customer focused and set the right priorities based on customer impact;
• Develop communications and team competences.

Course Content

About Apollo 13 – an ITSM experience™Scenario 

You are the Mission Control Center of NASA. Your aim is to support the Crew during the

Mission. You must design your services, implement them, execute them and apply continual improvement practices in order to ensure mission success. In 4 rounds you will be challenged with events, problems, issues, changes and increasing business demand. You must apply the ITSM best practices in order to become successful. You will guide the crew through the launch, journey to and from the moon, to a safe return and splashdown,  at the same time realizing the strategic goals for the mission.

Course Overview

Intense competition coupled with flattened hierarchies, multi-dimensional teams and a diverse working environment characterize today’s business climate. For those leading IT teams, this reality is compounded with the challenges of:

• Realizing that most IT employees have deeper technical knowledge than their leaders
• Communicating with and supervising employees when you often can’t tell what they are doing
• Motivating IT employees who may not be interested in traditional career paths
• Coaching and developing highly technical skilled employees
• Hiring and retaining the best talent
• Bridging the communication gap between IT and the rest of the business

The Active Leadership for IT Professionals program provides the concepts, tools and practices to help overcome these challenges and to help IT leaders effectively coach, empower and lead individuals and teams to higher levels of performance.

Course Objectives

After the workshop, you will be able to:

• Assess personal leadership behaviours and attitudes that impact the performance of others
• Plan and deliver clear, concise communication to direct, guide and engage employees
• Understand what people need in order to change a behaviour or practice
• Determine how ability and motivation impact performance and outcomes, regardless of the task
• Explore three different leadership styles and when they should be used to maximize the performance of others
• Match the appropriate leadership style to individuals and specific tasks
• Explore how the foundational principles of coaching impact coaching results
• Differentiate between “coaching for job” versus “coaching for career”
• Provide behavioural feedback that recognizes and rewards employee performance
• Use a consistent approach to providing feedback that reinforces desired behaviours and helps achieve performance improvements
• Assess performance gaps and improve task performance
• Coach, reinforce and create a motivational climate for employee growth and retention
• Create a personal development plan based on assessed leadership strengths and development needs

Course Overview

Service design offers an innovative approach to creating and enhancing business services. AssistKD’s Service Design Consultancy course covers the key topics that enable consultants to collaborate with their customers and advise on how to offer the services their customers need. This course prepares attendees to sit the A4Q Certification in Service Design Consultancy examination and contributes to the achievement of the A4Q Certified Service Designer Award.

Course Objectives

Upon the completion of this workshop, candidates will be able to:

•    Describe the purpose and role of the Service Design Consultant.

•    Understand the principles and ethics of Service Design.

•    Understand the qualification and initiation of a consultancy assignment.

•    Analyse service value propositions.

•    Apply situation diagnosis using causal loop diagrams.

•    Explain option appraisal and principled negotiation.

Course Content

Introduction to Service Design Consultancy and the SD Consultancy Service Framework

Service Design Principles and Ethics

Initiating and qualifying a service design consulting assignment

Investigating a business service situation

Business service performance measures 

Appraising and diagnosing a business service situation

Generating service design options

Techniques to evaluate service design options

Techniques to implement a service design solution

Course Overview

Learn how to apply a creative, human-centred design mindset to business challenges and meet the needs of all stakeholders with our Design Thinking course.

Course Objectives

Design thinking is a creative and human centred approach to business innovation. It’s about applying the design mindset to business challenges, making sure solutions are customer-centric and focused on meeting the needs of all stakeholders. 

This Design Thinking course covers the underlying principles of design thinking, bringing the strategies and techniques to life by applying them to a range of real life scenarios. Delegates learn how to empathise with and engage with the customer, unlock key insights, question assumptions, explore strategies and test ideas.

Course Content

During this course, you will cover:

• The rationale for Design Thinking
• The Design Thinking mindset
• Core design thinking practices
• The Design Council Double Diamond
• The d.School 5 stage approach (Stanford)
• Design Thinking techniques including:

– Service safari

– Empathy map

– Customer journey map

– Problem framing

– Service blueprint

– Assumption reversal

– Prototyping

– Feedback capture grid

• Organisational culture and Design Thinking
• Cultural aspects that may inhibit or enable Design Thinking
• The Culture Pyramid