Academy

In recent years, a number of companies, including Apple, Google and SAP, have adopted Design Thinking (DT), service design, or human-centered design to gain a competitive edge. There is much more to this approach than “simply” prototyping customer-centered solutions and transforming the customer-designer relationship. So, what is design thinking exactly? And how is it revolutionizing global market leaders, both internally and externally?
This course gets to the heart of why the DT approach to innovation can be a critical success factor. 

Due to the microservice architecture, applications are increasingly implemented as cloud-native. This step of the application evolution promises a lot. In addition to abstracting hardware resources, resistance, elasticity and high accessibility are the key elements of infrastructure and platform as a service providers.

This course shows what a cloud-native application is all about. The principles of lightweight services and managed environments as well as their advantages over self-built implementations are shown.

It’s safe to say that blockchain technology is currently one of the most hyped topics related to digitalization. Many companies are exploring the technology’s potential in their business segment. 
But what kind of promise does blockchain hold? And how can that promise be realized? What is the technical background, and how is the market developing? This course sheds light on all aspects of blockchain technology and provides an orientation to guide decision-making processes. 
 

An overview of artificial intelligence – from high-level approaches and visions of the future to learning about the technologies and methods used. We will demonstrate how AI projects can be implemented and used successfully in production. We will develop practical application scenarios based on input from course participants.

Used correctly, workshops are an effective tool for advancing projects. In addition to choosing the most appropriate workshop format and methods, it is also vital to create a positive, constructive, and hence productive atmosphere. The facilitator has a crucial role to play in this, and targeted organizational and personal preparation is equally important. This course will provide you with tips and tricks for successful workshop facilitation.

This course is an opportunity for participants to familiarize themselves with communications theories, to understand a range of different perspectives, to explore various communication techniques, and to develop their own communication skills. The primary focus is on the application and exploration of different approaches.

This course builds on Fundamentals of Effective Communication, focusing on communication within projects. Communication is the most important factor in determining the success of a project – effective communication means effective project management, while poor communication may result in a project’s failure. This course aims to identify and understand the potential pitfalls of project communication and to enable participants to lay the foundations for successful project management. We will consider project communication from different perspectives, drawing on a range of case studies.

We are surrounded by conflicts – at work, at home, between friends. They are an inevitable fact of life. This makes it all the more important to know how to handle them effectively. During this course, you will learn about your own conflict behavior. You will understand how conflicts arise and learn to recognize the typical stages of conflict escalation. We will develop ways of handling conflicts constructively. This involves “changing” our “perspective” and seeing how conflicts can be viewed as opportunities to gain something positive.

Change is part and parcel of everyday life. Our world is undergoing radical, increasingly rapid change driven by technological advances, leaving us to confront new challenges in both our private and professional lives. The ability to manage change is therefore more crucial than ever. This course will present key approaches and methodologies for handling change in a controlled, and ultimately successful, manner. You will become familiar with a variety of approaches and attitudes to change and different interests in relation to it, and will be better equipped to deal with different responses to change.

In recent years, a number of companies, including Apple, Google and SAP, have adopted Design Thinking (DT), service design, or human-centered design to gain a competitive edge. There is much more to this approach than “simply” prototyping customer-centered solutions and transforming the customer-designer relationship. So, what is design thinking exactly? And how is it revolutionizing global market leaders, both internally and externally?
This course gets to the heart of why the DT approach to innovation can be a critical success factor. To this end, we will investigate the three stages of transformation – people, process, and space.
Participants will be able to use real prototypes to tackle their own challenges and test these on customers. You will learn how DT as the most effective innovation approach can transform corporate culture and innovation processes.

This three-day course covers the practical knowledge needed to take on the role of Product Owner or Scrum Master within a software development team.
At the end of the course, participants will be equipped to tackle the online assessments for the Professional Scrum Product Owner I and Professional Scrum Master I certifications.

This two-day course will provide participants with the knowledge necessary to use the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) and the underlying principles of lean thinking, product development flow, and Agility to introduce Agility on a company-wide basis.
Course participants will learn how the principles and practices behind the framework provide support for Agile teams, Agile programs, Agile portfolio management, and Agile architecture.
 

This course is aimed at all those who work with teams in agile environments, promote agility and accompany change processes through coaching: Agile Coaches, Scrum Master, Product Owner, Team Leader, Business Analysts, Consultants.

The coaching dojo focuses on tackling concrete, current challenges in the practice of the participants. Through the exchange with other experienced coaches you will receive ideas, suggestions, criticism, feedback and praise to create new solutions. This enables the participant to try these solutions on the next working day.

This hands-on course provides the necessary basics to work as a team member in a software development team.

How can the user perspective be adequately integrated into projects? How can we ensure that solutions are as user-friendly as possible in the face of increasing requirements?
On this course, you will learn about the relevant methodologies and approaches. It will equip you with the tools you need to enhance the user experience in your software projects.

This course provides you with the knowledge needed to apply Agile requirements engineering methods actively. The Agile approach requires a clear understanding of common values, from the definition of requirements to the finished product. Conventional approaches to analyzing requirements are therefore becoming increasingly irrelevant.
The course uses practical case studies. Relevant exercises using tools will allow you to experience and gain insights into best practice in Agile requirements engineering. This course prepares you for IREB CPRE RE@ Agile Primer certification, which follows the course.
 

How is architecture work in Agile software projects supposed to negotiate the conflicting priorities of tight deadlines, frequent changes, and the risks of making poor decisions?
This short, exciting, and practical introduction for Agile team members will inspire participants to define even more successful software architectures.
We will cover the key principles, approaches, and practices for effective modern architecture work.

This course is aimed at everyone who works with JIRA in a project environment: Product owners, team members, business analysts, Scrum masters, project managers, UX experts, other project participants.
JIRA is used to manage all types of agile projects. This course serves as a basic training to be able to use JIRA efficiently in everyday project work.
This course takes place interactively and participants learn through hands-on experimentation with a JIRA instance.

This course shows developers what a cloud-native application is all about. It shows the principles of lightweight services and managed environments and their advantages over self-built implementations. Furthermore a deeper insight into the basics of cloud-native architecture is given. The course is rounded off by the principles of design & implementation of your own cloud-native application. DevOps, an important component of CNA (cloud-native-applications), is also addressed.

This practical course covers the basic principles, best practices, and relevant skills for entering the world of Android apps and back-end service development with Kotlin. We assume that participants are familiar with the key principles and concepts of app development and put these into practice from the start.

React is currently the most commonly used JavaScript framework. This hands-on course covers the basic principles, best practices, and relevant practical skills for entering the world of productive front-end development using React.

Angular is an established element of enterprise client-side development. This hands-on course covers the basic principles, best practices, and relevant practical skills for entering the world of productive front-end development using the successor to Google’s popular AngularJS framework.

This practical course covers the basic principles, best practices, and relevant skills for developing cross-platform apps using Web technologies. We will examine the key principles and concepts in the Ionic Framework 4 and develop our own app step-by-step.

The «Public Transport» course gives a complete overview of the history, current status and upcoming developments of public transport in Switzerland. Megatrends such as digitisation, rural exodus and demographic shifts in society are triggering new strategies and business models.

Agile approaches are increasingly prevalent in software development. However, when inflexible processes are replaced, the documentation is often cast to one side as well. There is a lack of pragmatic, easily understandable methods for describing software systems.
During this course, you will become familiar with the C4 architecture model, focusing on context, container, component, and class diagrams. These will be used to document the different levels of an application’s architecture, allowing it to be visualized more easily.
Alongside these basic principles, this course will also examine suitable tools for supporting the creation of diagrams. During the course, we will develop a C4 model for a sample application to consolidate the theoretical learning.

The role of software architect is an increasingly important one, requiring in-depth training. The iSAQB ® Certified Professional for Software Architecture Program (www.isaqb.org/certifications/foundation-level) offers a globally recognized standard of professional training and development in this field.
On the Foundation Level, we will provide participants with the knowledge and skills required to design and document a problem-specific software architecture based on a requirements specification for small and medium-sized systems. This can then serve as a basis or template for implementation.
The integrated CPSA-FL examination will be conducted by an authorized iSAQB certifying body.

Web APIs are omnipresent. Every larger web application uses them or provides them as an interface, whether this is to embed comments (Disqus), process payments (Stripe, PayPal), or to link to Google or Facebook services.
This workshop covers how to design modern Web APIs based on HTTP/REST with a good Developer Experience (DX).

Docker has been riding a wave of success since its launch in 2013. The open source project generated enormous hype and was instrumental in the breakthrough of container virtualization. This course will cover the basic principles needed to use this new tool in the world of containers.
We will apply and consolidate the theory in hands-on labs.
The key aim of this course is to simplify getting started with Docker and to enable you to deploy this tool in your own projects.
The hands-on labs will provide step-by-step guidance on packaging a multitier application in Docker images and automating their deployment.

In software projects, installing or configuring server setups is always a challenge. Various frameworks to address this problem have now been developed and are attracting great interest. Ansible is one such frameworks and can be deployed with minimal dependencies. This crash course in Ansible – a crucial aspect of DevOps – provides a solid foundation for getting started with Ansible.

The introduction of communications and messaging networks in the mid-1970s heralded the beginning of the era of modern cryptography. Modern cryptography offers a range of different processes for encrypting information, exchanging key material, or safeguarding the integrity of a message. At the end of the course, participants should be able to “decrypt” information such as “AES-CBC with PKCS padding” or “ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256” correctly and to understand the concepts underpinning cryptographic processes. The course is specifically aimed at non-mathematicians.

How do you write good code? And why exactly should I do so? After all, it’s laborious and time-consuming work.
In this course, you will learn why good code is crucial in large projects – and when it’s OK to be less demanding. We will start by establishing what we mean by “good code.” How can you tell that code is bad? Over the years, developers have drawn up standards and principles based on their own experience. These are now commonly known as “clean code.” Based on specific examples, this course presents the key principles and how they are applied. During the practical part of the course, you will evaluate code based on these principles and improve it by refactoring.