Training opportunities at adesso

Training is an investment for companies. But it is an investment that pays off. The search for qualified specialists is never over – and that is no different at adesso. Having an excellent training programme enables adesso not only to train qualified specialists, but also to instruct them in the technologies or areas that are a particularly good fit for the company both now and in the future. What is more, having an excellent training programme can also be used to convince trainees and students that the company is the right one for them – and thus keep them on board. In my blog post, I will give you an overview of the various training opportunities that adesso has to offer. I will also describe my own experience of the dual study programme at adesso and show how training courses could be taken to a new level in the future.

Training

The training opportunities offered by adesso are part of the dual study system, which means participants receive a German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CIC) qualification when they complete the programme. The trainees attend a vocational school and complete a training course at the company.

adesso offers various training courses at nine locations throughout Germany. Most of the courses on offer are to become an IT specialist with a specialisation in application development. There are also a number of different trainee positions in office management as well as IT training with a specialisation in system integration. The in-company and school-based process can vary depending on the location, the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the specialisation and the trainer.

Dual study

adesso offers the dual study programme primarily for students doing bachelor’s degree programmes in Business Information Systems and Applied Computer Science. In addition, it also offers various master’s programmes in the field of computer science as dual study programmes.

The bachelor’s degree programmes are divided into degree programmes with and without the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce qualification. In dual study programmes without the CIC qualification, dual students are either busy studying or working at the company.

adesso’s bachelor’s degree programmes with the integrated CIC qualification offer training courses to become IT specialists for application development as well as for system integration. The dual students complete both the Bachelor of Science and the CIC qualification. Trainees usually need to attend a vocational school to obtain the CIC qualification. In some cases, the respective universities or universities of applied sciences replace the vocational school in this respect. In addition to their studies, the students also complete vocational training at the company, including taking their final exams and doing the final projects that are part of the CIC qualification. The standard period of study, the practical phases and the approach to in-company training vary depending on the place of study and the degree programme.

My experience as a dual study student

I myself completed the dual study programme in software engineering at the Dortmund location. adesso has a cooperation in place with the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts. The degree programme included training as an IT specialist in the field of application development.

I started studying in August 2015. First, I developed a computer game using Java together with the six other people who started the dual study programme with me at adesso. After that, I was given a few practice projects to do until I could be assigned to my first internal project in my second semester. My training also involved planned training courses and multi-day training sessions in other areas of adesso.

What I particularly liked about the study model was that I spent two days a week at the company and three days at the university. It meant that I could continue to do practical work at the company during the semester and learn a great deal as a result. The standard period of study of nine semesters means that each trainee needs to complete approximately five courses per semester. Many of the other dual degree programmes are limited to just six semesters, which means that you would have to invest a lot of time in studying on top of doing the work at the company. You can easily adapt the university programme to suit your own ability by bringing forward courses from later, more advanced semesters.

During exam season, the dual students in Dortmund are released from their company duties for one week per exam to study. I learned a lot together with the other students during this time. Bringing courses forward also meant some of the years were mixed, which I enjoyed because it generates even more discussion between the dual students.

The sixth semester is when the CIC exam takes place, and you also do a software internship. The CIC exam includes carrying out and documenting a software project and a written and oral exam. The software project is usually the first project that the students do completely by themselves – from requirements engineering to commissioning and maintenance. In my software internship, which was supervised by both the university and adesso, I used Scrum for the first time and learned a lot about communication in software development teams as well as about implementing quality measures.

After you complete the CIC qualification, there are still three semesters of the standard period of study left, meaning the dual study programme is still not over. The dual students continue to work at the company two days a week. At that point, I started working on customer projects. Working with experienced software engineers helped me further develop my programming skills.

The dual study programme at adesso gave me a lot of practical experience that I can use in projects. On top of that, I still appreciate how connected the dual students are with one another. For example, I completed my bachelor’s degree three years ago and I now supervise dual students in their CIC projects, during their software internship and while they are preparing their final dissertations, which allows me to pass on my experience.

Experiences of other students

For my master’s dissertation, I conducted interviews with other dual students and people who had done other training courses or were responsible for training at different locations. This allowed me to identify some parallels, especially for training in the field of software development:

• Many trainers have developed exercises and made them available for the first time. They also developed a suitable ‘curriculum’, which was regularly revised.
• The trainees worked together on internal projects at the beginning.
• When the trainees had developed their skills sufficiently, they were also involved in customer projects. However, the timing varies greatly.
• Regular feedback was very important to the trainees.
• The effort of managing the training was heavily dependent on the number of trainees. As soon as there was five trainees or more, their progress, marks, the courses they attended and so on had to be recorded in writing.
• The trainers had to keep track of the technical progress, absences, appointments and marks from the vocational school or university for all the trainees.
• The trainers only know a few other adessi who are trainers.

Taking training to the next level

The interviews revealed a few points that would make the training easier to manage for the trainers and could also further increase the quality of the training:

The opportunity to share and tap into synergies

Since the training for software development is very similar, there could be an excellent opportunity to tap into synergies here. This does not work at the moment because many of the trainers only know a handful, if any, adessi who are responsible for giving the same training.

By getting in contact with other trainers, projects with trainees or dual students could be carried out across teams and tasks and curricula could be developed together. This would enable them to factor in several different avenues of experience and create the best possible exercises and curricula as a result.

Central material management

This point picks up on the previous one, as this is also primarily about sharing. The intention here is to store materials that have been developed in one place so that people can always access them – if a trainer leaves the company, for example. In addition, the trainees and dual students can also access all the materials they need there, which in turn means they know where they can find the documents for their training.

Digitalise progress

It is a wise idea to digitalise the training course so as to simplify the management aspect and make everything more transparent for everyone. All the data that needs to managed should be found in one application. This mainly concerns the progress in the curriculum and managing marks, projects and exercises.

And what happens next?

You should know by now how important and special training is at adesso. But we would not be adesso if we did not continue to work on ourselves. In order to improve training even further, it makes sense to digitalise certain management tasks and to network more.

I developed a concept for the digitalisation of training in my master’s dissertation. A large number of trainers and trainees have requested that the platform be implemented, and the Line of Business Microsoft has planned to do that.

You can find out more about career opportunities at adesso on our website.

If you would like to learn more about exciting topics from the world of adesso, then check out our latest blog posts.