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Starting from 2023, PeopleCert announced that all Global Best Practice certifications will need to be renewed after three years. This way PeopleCert can assist candidates in their lifelong journey and inspire them to keep on developing their professional skills. Besides retaking the same exam or taking further courses and certifications, the third option is collecting and logging CPD (Continuing Professional Development) points.

How to log your CPD Points each year

You can further develop your professional skills by logging CPD points through the MyAxelos portal. To keep your current certifications valid, CPD points can be logged against an individual or multiple certifications. For each Product Suite, candidates must submit at least 20 CPD points each year, across different categories of CPD, for three years consecutively. At the end of this period, your certification renew-by date will be extended by three years, and the cycle will repeat. These points must be submitted by the date on which you originally passed your most recent exam within the Product Suite. For example, if you originally passed the exam on 1st April, your 20 CPD points must be logged by 1st April each year.

What are the PeopleCert Product Suites?

Renewing a certification can be done within the same product suite. An ITIL® 4 certification will not be renewed by obtaining a PRINCE2® certification, but could be renewed by taking any other ITIL 4 certification, such as ITIL 4 Specialist: Create, Deliver and Support. Product suites are as follows:

• ITIL 4 Product Suite: All ITIL 4 certifications
• Project, Programme & Portfolio Management Product Suite: PRINCE2®, PRINCE2® Agile, MoR®, MSP®, MoV®, MoP®, P3O®

What are the different categories of CPD points?

Below you can find some examples (a more extensive overview can be found on the PeopleCert website):

• Professional experience: applying best practice in the workplace or coaching colleagues in relation to best practice
• Professional education: PeopleCert certifications or other certifications from non-PeopleCert accredited training organisations
• Community: organising or attending industry or best practice related events

For any questions, please reach out to us anytime or have a look at PeopleCert’s website.

From the 14th to the 27th November 2022 we offer you a 30% discount on all our E-learning courses!         Have a look at our E-learning offer and choose between:  

6 good reasons to choose the E-Learning platform

1. Explanatory videos Our experts have cooked up a series of clear and interactive videos to teach you the method, help you pass your exam(s), and apply it to your projects.
2. Interactive readings The interactive readings further explain some key concepts. You can use these readings if you are interested in learning more about the recommended actions when applying the method.
3. Mock exam questions In each lesson you will find a number of multiple choice questions to simulate the real exam experience.
4. 6 months access minimum Take the time you need: You will have access to the online learning platform for 6 to 10 months (depending on the online course). Within these months you can set your own schedule and divide the course as you like.
5. MemoTrainer QRP uses the MemoTrainer™ system designed to challenge learners by selective repetition and smart exercises to activate knowledge and stimulate long term memory.
6. Tutor support Our elearning solution is based on an easy structure and meant to be self explanatory. Even so, every participant is unique and to make sure that you feel confident with every next step of your study approach you can contact your tutor if you have any questions about the lessons you just covered.

The offer is valid from the 14th to the 27th of November and is limited to 3 E-learning packages per company. Do you have further questions? Contact us or visit our page!

At a time of unprecedented change, organisations are challenged by an extraordinary pace of technological innovation. Agile product delivery is needed, but is not enough anymore. Companies need business agility. This means that all departments need to use Lean and Agile practices to continually and proactively deliver innovative business solutions in a fast and efficient way. SAFe®, an enterprise framework for scaling agile, has the guidance to help organisations get there. It is an agility framework at scale, which means that instead of having an agile team it will imply an agile transformation for the complete organisation.

Leading SAFe

QRP International is now a Scaled Agile Bronze Transformation Partner. We offer the Leading SAFe training, which prepares for the SAFe 5 Agilist certification.

The Leading SAFe course enables attendees to lead a Lean-Agile enterprise successfully into the adoption of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). After an introduction to SAFe, the training provides the best practises and methods to drive your Lean-Agile transformation.

Thanks to SAFe 5.0, your organisation can become the Agile business it needs to be and win in the digital age.

Why could SAFe be the best choice for you?

If you want to become a lean-agile leader, SAFe could be the best solution for you. The framework is well suited to complex projects with many teams involved. Some of the benefits of the framework:

• It guarantees the technical agility of teams
• It makes it easier to drive and support organisational change
• It leverages the benefits of Agile, Scrum, Lean, DevOps and Kanban
• It can support you in managing your projects with a higher degree of agility, thus providing stakeholders with faster feedback
• The SAFe certification is recognized worldwide

Want to know more? Visit our page: SAFe certification For any further questions you can contact us directly here: switzerland@qrpinternational.com

Take advantage of -30% on your favorite courses! Discount valid from the 15th till the 30th of November 2021. As every year, Black Friday takes place around the world the day after American Thanksgiving: in 2021, it is therefore Friday, November 26 that this great day of promotions falls. This year has been difficult enough for everyone and we have decided to take the opportunity to offer you a 30% reduction on some of our training courses.

Virtual classroom

• ITIL Foundation German: December 13-14-15-16, 2021 => 753 CHF instead of 1075 CHF
• ITIL Foundation French: January 17-18-19-20, 2022 => 805 CHF instead of 1150 CHF
• ITIL Foundation English: February 8-9-10-11, 2022 => 805 CHF instead of 1150 CHF
• PRINCE2 Foundation English: January 24-25-26-27-28, 2022 => 875 CHF instead of 1250 CHF
• PRINCE2 Foundation French: 24-25-26-27-28 January 2022 => 875 CHF instead of 1250 CHF
• PRINCE2 Combi English: 24-25-26-27-28 January 2022 – 16-17-18 February 2022 => 1505 CHF instead of 2150 CHF
• PRINCE2 Combi French: January 24-25-26-27-28 – February 9-10-11, 2022 => 1505 CHF instead of 2150 CHF
• AgilePM Foundation English: January 18-19-20-21, 2022 => 805 CHF instead of 1150 CHF
• AgilePM Foundation French: January 18-19-20-21, 2022 => 805 CHF instead of 1150 CHF

E-learning

• PRINCE2 Combi English => 809 CHF instead of 1155 CHF
• PRINCE2 Combi French => 809 CHF instead of 1155 CHF

97% of decision makers and 84% of individuals said obtaining certification had a positive impact, improving efficiency and employee satisfaction, so what are you waiting for? It is time to have some fun and end 2021 on a high note!

In this article Fabio Mora, Software Engineer, Agile Coach, DevOps expert and author, delves into some more practical and technical aspects of the Site Reliability Engineer profession and some fundamental concepts, in particular, that of reliability.  

Reliability

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) means working on the most important functionality of a system: reliability, a “feature” that precedes any other. To illustrate its importance, imagine that you need to use a service whose operation is based, in whole or in part, on computer systems, electronics, telco and other related industries. Take any online service, reliability is critical. If the assistant who wakes you up in the morning and streams your favourite radio station might not be essential, the smartphone that allows you to interact with relatives and friends, manage documents and appointments, definitely is critical for the quality of your daily life. If your smartphone is “not available” and the apps like your bank account, Google, social networks, and Wikipedia do not work, some problems with your routine could loom. With various nuances of criticality, these are – under the hood – very sophisticated platforms that interact and work with each other, self-balance and often consist of millions or billions of lines of code and hardware devices. The functionalities all devices and apps offer to correspond to possibilities in the real world. The idea, therefore, is that they should be kept efficient and responsive for those who use them, with a quality of service that lives up to the needs. This is called reliability.  

The immensity of the system

To illustrate, if downloading a file from your Drive may appear to be a simple gesture, behind it lies an endless chain of events: from the mobile radio network, the data flow travels encapsulated, encrypted, in an optical fibre, through transoceanic cables that carry it within milliseconds to a remote datacenter, and back. In turn, there are data links that allow these infrastructures to communicate with each other, provide network services, hardware, but also energy and gas on the network – even further upstream. From POS to pay in-store, to ticketing services, to the railway, motorway, aeronautical and civil signalling networks, to remote surgery, to medical diagnoses in the cloud. But also the logistics of each package delivered by courier, the work of the “riders”, the heat trails of food and drug transport. All of these are pivotal platforms for entire sectors and for the quality of personal life: industry, communication, education, marketing, media, health, public administration, democratic processes – almost the entire service sector – and beyond.  

Possible drawbacks

There are many things that can go wrong.

1. First, systems become inherently unstable over time. Due to their incredible complexity, they tend to break down and it is necessary to work continuously so that this does not happen. The work activities on the systems and their updating must not be carried out only when «accidents», or events of an exceptional nature, occur, they must be part of business as usual. As business as usual, the activities can prevent inertia, obsolescence and technical debt.
2. The latter are all daemons that threaten not only the quality of the services but also the possibility of continuing to introduce changes in them. The SREs is to keep the systems stable and that of the programmers is to write and maintain the functionalities. of products, with continuous software releases. Each release, therefore, could introduce new errors, and complexity.

 

Value of SRE

Reliability is the upstream feature of any system. However, it is also a difficult feature to communicate because, when it is present, it can easily be taken for granted. It is also difficult to always give the right importance to this theme. To correct this small cognitive bias, the roles and organizational structures of the SREs are often autonomous with respect to the Software Engineers, who instead build the products. The value attributed to the SRE, therefore, is to keep these products stable on systems; error-free, maintainable, usable for the user – no matter what is happening. The value that an SRE offers to its organisation and to the users of its products is, ultimately, that of guaranteeing the stability of production systems, the maintainability of the software and a high-quality level of service. All this regardless of external conditions, be it traffic peaks or continuous releases of new features.  

Fabio Mora

Fabio Mora is a freelance programmer and Agile coach enthusiastic about Extreme Programming and Linux. Passionate about open source, economics and everything related to mathematics and data science, he first founded a web agency and then worked in eBay as a software engineer. He loves music, sound engineering and scientific dissemination.

Change Management courses exist to support the organizational change to make sure that employees are guided through their change journey. Organizational change refers to the actions in which an organisation alters one of its major components, like the used technologies, infrastructure, internal processes or internal culture. Organizational change is a direct response to an internal or external change in the organisation. Internal changes can be:

• New leadership,
• A new team structure,
• The implementation of new technology,
• Fast growth,
• The adaption of a different business model.

As we have experienced in the last year, an external factor can be

• A global pandemic,
• Changes in the business environment,
• A new competitive environment,
• Political changes.

Whether derived from internally or externally changes, any organisation comes at a point where organizational change is inevitable for the organisation to remain viable and scalable. Organizational change is often a very sensitive transformation as it is often conceived as something intimidating for those impacted by the change. In order to make the transition as delicate as possible, a Change Manager is appointed that has a strong knowledge of Change Management. This person can follow different courses and can get different certifications. Two common certifications are ‘Change Management’ and ‘Agile Change Agent’, two completely different approaches that both fit different situations. One is not better than the other, it depends on the organisation and the specific transition.  

Change Management by APMG

As the name suggests, APMG’s Change Management deals with managing change and its impact. It provides an overview of the theories within Change Management and can be seen as a collection of knowledge and best practices. The methodology provides an extensive insight at all the different stages of change and provides a structured approach for supporting individuals and teams to move from a current to a future state. The key takeaway from this methodology is that change is not a single event, it is a process. To follow structural change there is a need for clarity to connect business strategy to action and its main factor for success is proper communication with all stakeholders. Mastery, purpose and autonomy can help raise change engagement. This certification can aid Change Managers in the following situations;

• Traditional waterfall organisations,
• Transformational changes,
• Organisations with a strong top-down approach,
• Long-lasting and evident-based results.

 

Agile Change Agent by APMG

The Agile Change Agent is a hands-on course that supports the ideas of collaboration, empowerment and self-direction that are core to Agile approaches. These ideas are also at the heart of effective change management. Unless people participate in designing, practising and adopting the change for themselves, the change does not happen and benefits cannot be realized. The methodology defines different ‘change agents’, these can be managers or employees, or external consultants hired to facilitate change initiatives. A change agent is someone who has a (temporary) job within the organisation and next to his/her daily work facilitates change. The methodology and its course are full of exercises and practical tools, tips and advice. The course focuses less on the theories of change and is more methodological. This certification can aid Change Managers, and others, in the following situations;

• Agile organisations,
• Adaptive changes,
• Organisations with a strong bottom-up approach,
• Fast, person-driven results.

 

How do these courses & certifications compare?

The APMG Change Management program provides a structured approach for supporting individuals and teams to move from a current to a future state. The course equips participants with the theory, tools and techniques to contribute effectively to planning, implementing and sustaining change. The APMG Agile Change Agent certification includes a simple, repeatable lifecycle model which acts as the structure of any change plan. The course provides questionnaires and checklists to help create the culture for effective change. QRP Switzerland offers both the APMG Change Management course and the APMG Agile Change Agent course. Do you have more questions about the differences between the different Change Management approaches? You can contact us and we will be happy to support you with more information, customized to your needs.