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The Professional Discussion is a one-hour interview with an independent assessor who will ask pre-prepared open questions to test your understanding of the criteria below. It is designed to give you the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge that is difficult to cover or to demonstrate in your project.
An additional breakdown of the KSBs, criteria, and possible questions is available in this Google Doc.
- Remember that the assessor only knows what you tell them - so if there's something you want to tell them about, do!
- You are welcome to have written notes to help prompt you; if you find some questions tough, or have particular stories you want to remember, then write them down beforehand.
- The assessment may refer to terminology that isn't common in your workplace, so make sure you're aware of the terms in the Course Glossary and don't be afraid to draw on similar experiences even if they're not exactly the same.
- For example, if asked whether you've ever facilitated a post-mortem you might say no; but if you've been involved in a retrospective or a lessons-learned session where you've discussed an incident & planned out a resolution or future preventions then bring this up!
Below are some general questions that the assessor will often ask to open the assessment, and start to understand you and your role.
- Tell me about your role
- Talk me through a list of projects that you've worked on over the last couple of years. The assessor may ask questions about specific projects you mention, such as whether you were responsible for DevOps on them.
- What are the main things that you have learned and applied from the apprenticeship?
- What are the risks of CI/CD pipelines?
From here, the criteria are listed again as a reminder of what the assessor is looking out for, along with some typical or possible questions covering each section.
Pass Criteria:
- Explains how an organisation's culture can both provide creative freedom and introduce constraints.
- Explains the connection between culture and the organisation’s potential for continuous improvement with both internal and external parties.
Distinction Criteria:
- Explains the mindsets that underpin organisational culture - e.g. outcome versus activity driven, collaboration versus silos, accountability, trust and empowerment and their impact on the organisation.
- Assesses the difference between risk avoidance and risk acceptance and how these link to culture.
Example questions:
- What are some of the risks/disadvantages of DevOps? Can you do DevOps wrong?
- What practices does your team have in place to prevent siloing of knowledge?
- Who's in charge of DevOps structure in your organisation?
- What makes DevOps a good fit for your company? How is DevOps shaping the culture?
Pass Criteria:
- Identifies relevant data protection legislation and assesses its impact on the ethical use of customer data, as well as its relevance to emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Example Questions:
- How does your team handle data in an ethical way?
- What legislation is relevant to data processing within the UK?
- How have you managed data securely on your project?
Pass Criteria:
- Identifies different problem solving techniques and evaluates how they use modelling approaches that are best suited to each technique in order to gain consensus as a team.
Distinction Criteria:
- Describes how they facilitated an incident post-mortem/lessons learned session.
- Explains the root cause analysis process. Gains consensus on an improvement plan, including accountabilities and the implementation timeline.
Example Questions:
- Describe a problem you've solved recently, and how you approached it.
- What problems has your team faced and what did you learn from them?
- When have you facilitated an incident post-mortem and what was the outcome?
Pass Criteria:
- Identifies the typical multi-disciplinary team roles and explains how they fit within the organisation and the wider digital landscape.
- Explains how they completed a task, deploying a flexible, collaborative and pragmatic approach with peers and other stakeholders.
- Describes examples of different communication methods used when dealing with internal and external stakeholders
- Explains how they have acted in an inclusive and professional manner.
Example Questions:
- Tell me about how your team is structured
- How does your team work?
- What are some of the key roles with regard to DevOps in your organisation? Who manages infrastructure?
- How do you handle conflicting priorities?
- Which communication methods do you use and when? How do you communicate with clients?
Pass Criteria:
- Explains the difference between the various types of implementation - on premise v SaaS, open source v enterprise, bespoke v off-the-shelf.
- Explains an example of having utilised the right type of tool for a particular task, describing the pros and cons of the alternatives.
Distinction Criteria:
- Justifies their choice of tooling and the potential impact of making an alternative choice explaining the cause and effect of making the wrong decision.
Example Questions:
- How did you choose your CI/CD tool for your project?
- Tell me about a tool that you use, and what alternatives you've considered
- Does the company have plans to move to cloud? Why? Public or private cloud?
- What steps go into your CI/CD pipeline? How have you set up or improved pipelines? (This may sound unrelated, but the assessor could ask specific questions around your CI/CD pipelines)
Pass Criteria:
- Explains the CPD (Continuing Professional Development) undertaken by themselves in order to keep up with cutting edge technologies and maintain appropriate certifications.
- Explains how they invest in others continuous learning and activities and the impact this has on their own development.
Distinction Criteria:
- Gives examples of how their CPD has had a positive impact on theirs and their team’s work.
- Explains how this has helped them perform their role better and make better technology choices.
Example Questions:
- How do you keep up to date with new tools & technologies?
- What other certificates or qualifications would benefit you?
- How do you balance time between learning and work priorities?
- How has your learning benefited you and your team?
- Tell me about one thing that you learned on the project?
Pass Criteria:
- Explains the benefits, in terms of security and overall quality, of subjecting written code to the scrutiny of others.
- Explains how they collaborate on code through pair/mob commits.
Example Questions:
- Do you ever pair program? Why/why not?
- Do you give or receive code reviews?
- What is the most important thing about code quality?
Pass Criteria:
- Explains when they have:
- lead a demonstration or discussion in an engaging manner, communicating at the right level to suit technical and non-technical audiences.
- worked collaboratively to share knowledge through, for example, blog posts and pairing on tasks.
Example Questions:
- How does you ensure knowledge is shared throughout your team?
- How does your team communicate?
- Tell me about a time you've had to communicate effectively with non-technical stakeholders