AssistKD's Oral Preparation Workshop is designed to help participants prepare for the BCS Oral examination, which they must pass before being awarded the Diploma.
The Oral exam consists of a 50-minute interview with two BCS oral examiners. The examiners evaluate whether participants can put all of the techniques they have learned from the various Certificate modules into an overall context - and verify that they have the required analytical and interpersonal skills to be awarded the Diploma.
During the Oral Preparation Workshop candidates have the opportunity to review the various modules they have taken and are prepared for what they might expect from the examiners during the Oral exam.
Key areas of the workshop are:
- Introduction to the exam and hints and tips for preparing for it and taking it
- Revision of the core modules of the BCS Diploma in Solution Development
- Revision of their practitioner specialist module
- Sample oral questions, how to approach them and practice answers
We recommend that the optimal time to attend this workshop is between two and four weeks before your actual oral examination. This provides sufficient time for personal study and revision before the examination.
- The format of the exam and the examiners checklist
- Hints and tips for sitting the exam
- Review of the core modules
- Review of the practitioner specialist module(s)
- Mock oral exam questions
No but this course prepares participants for the 50-minute oral examination leading to the BCS International Diploma in Solution Development
A comprehensive revision pack is provided prior to the course and a PDF of mind maps built up during the course is provided at the end of the course to support ongoing revision.
BCS Solution Development Diploma Oral Examination Preparation Workshop (a one-day course)
Course Content
Solution development principles
- The rationale for solution development – the reasons for initiating a solution development project and typical inputs to it
- Relationship between solution development and other disciplines
- Solution development approaches – bespoke, COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf), MOTS (Modified Off-The-Shelf) and component based
- Solution development lifecycles – Waterfall, V-model and Iterative
- Roles and responsibilities
- Professionalism and solution development
Solution development practices
- Requirements Engineering – system investigation techniques, requirement types and defining requirements
- Prioritisation
- Prototyping
Systems modelling techniques
- Use of models within systems development
- Modelling different views of a system - three view approach
- Modelling system data
- Modelling system functionality
- Modelling dynamic system behaviour
- Cross-checking of models
Design and quality assurance
- Elements of system design – input and output design, data design and process design
- System controls and security
- Quality assurance – software testing, quality reviews, solution evaluation and service level agreements
Deployment and maintenance
- Release management – planning and communication, data take-on and migration, packaging the release, backout plans, post-implmentation reviews
- Deployment approaches – distributing and deploying software artefacts and changeover strategies
- Managing changes to the solution – types of software maintenance, change control process, configuration management and version control
- Software tools to support solution development
Selected practitioner specialist module
- Relevance of the selected module to solution development
- Description of the chosen approach and techniques
- Application of the chosen approach and techniques
Practice questions
In this part of the workshop, the trainer, who is always an experienced oral examiner, provides participants with practice in handling the types of questions that they will face in the oral examination and gives feedback on the participants’ answers and presentation.
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