Once your Portfolio focus has been ‘fleshed-out’ and agreed with your employer and trainer, you can start working on putting it all together. This stage will use the STAR and Story idea at its core – view more in the STAR & Story section – to make sure everything is detailed and ordered in the best way possible.

As your Portfolio piece should, ideally, be planned around a project or task you have coming up you need to remember to gather evidence and content which you can use to support your story. There is loads of advice and guidance for this in the Gathering Evidence section. Whilst you complete the task or project, you need to remember to gather your evidence, and then store it safely so that you don’t have to hunt for it when you need it. Some evidence (i.e. screenshots) might need redacting, and this is also covered in the Gathering Evidence section. Your trainer will also help you with this, and in some cases we can even help setup a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) between your employer and the Assessor.

Gathering the right evidence is one of the most important elements of evidencing the KSBs. It is always advisable to gather more evidence than you need, and just not use some, rather than need to find more evidence later.

The first draft of your Portfolio work will, quite often, not be perfect and this is absolutely fine as the process is designed to be supportive and take several itterations of work to get it spot on.

During this stage of the process you will choose the best format fand structure for your Portfolio piece, and this can be a report, video, narated presentation, or anything else that is suitable for your line of work and skill set. Guidance on selecting the best format and making it work best for you is available in the Format & Structure section.

You will also need to make sure you are considering how you write your Portfolio piece, and whether some of the tools within various software applications might be useful to help you. Guidance on this specific element is available in the Writing Skills & Styles section. At all times, you should be thinking “Will somebody that doesn’t know my work or workplace, understand what I am saying?”. Imaging giving the Portfolio piece to a family member that doesn’t understand your job, and consider whether they would be able to explain back to you what you have done.

After putting down your story, supporting it by evidence and making sure it is all in a suitable format and structurem you can submit your work through ELMS so your trainer can provide you with feedback and constructive support.

After submitting your first draft, your trainer will provide you with some supportive and developmental guidance through your ELMS submission point. This will vary from asking you to expand on a point or further evidence something more, through to notes on your format, layout, spelling, and more. All of this guidance is designed to support you in making the best piece of Portfolio work possible.

Your second draft will build on your first version through implementing this feedback and (usually) adding more detail and description in various places. It is not rare for additional drafts to be required when a portfolio piece is complex and has multiple parts to it.

Prior to submitting your second draft, it is a good idea to ask your line manager or mentor to read your Portfolio piece. They can give you additional (subject and context related) guidance to help.

Once you have responded to all of the guidance which has been identified by your trainer and line manager, mentor, or colleagues, you will then submit your second draft. This will be to the same submission point so that your trainer can give you more feedback and, ideally, agree with you that the piece is complete and it can be signed-off.

Once you and your trainer agree that the Portfolio piece is the best that is can be, it will be signed-off and you will know that one of your pieces is now complete. Then you can continue working on other Portfoio pieces to build the Portfolio and make it as strong as possible.

In the perfect world, you should be working on a couple of Portfolio pieces at a time as this allows you to keep making progress.

Later in the program, prior to submitting your Portfolio to the Assessor, you will have the chance to make any adjustments or tweaks to your Portfolio that you would like. This can often be to add in that from completing a given task or project, you have been given additional projects, feedback or comments, or even a promotion. This type of final addition allows the Assessor to see the impact, on you, of the work you have done.

The Digital Marketer standard uses the concept of KSBs, but in this program you need ot include ALL competencies within your Portfolio. For more guidance on this, as it is slightly different to other standards please speak to your trainer.

All other Portfolio guidance found in this site is relevant to your Portfolio development. All End Point Assessment guidance is also relevant for the mapped assessment methods.

The Information Communications Techncian apprenticeship standard has three pathways. Find your pathway, and you will see the relevant KSB mapping for your Portfolio and Professional Discussion

Digital Communications Technician

Network Support Technician

Support Technician

There is only a single pathway in the Level 3 Software Development Technician apprenticeship standard. Ther are, however, currently two versions of the course.

If you started your course before 1st June 2021, you are on the older version of the course and you will need to cover all of the competencies (known as ‘Technical Competencies’, ‘Technical Knowledge and Understanding’, and ‘Underpinning Skills, Attitudes and Behaviours.’, These are the same as the modern KSBs, just with different titles.

Everything else in this Portfolio support section, and the End Point Assessment guidance for assessment methods, is still relevant to you and your course.

If you started your course after 1st June 2021, you have the following KSB mapping for your Portfolio and Professional Discussion.

The Level 4 Cyber Security Technologist apprenticeship standard has three pathways, but every pathway has the same mapping of KSBs for the Portfolio. The pathways have been laid out, though, to help ensure clarity.

Cyber Security Engineer

Cyber Defend and Respond

Cyber Risk Analyst

The Portfolio pieces within the Level 4 Cyber Security Technologist standard are given ‘themes’ to focus on. These themes must be the primary focus of the individual Portfolio piece, but that piece should not be limited to that theme. It is important to include as wide a range of KSBs as possible in every piece of Portfolio work. The themes for the six Portfolio pieces are;

• • Cyber security cinceots and its importance to business and society (K3),

  • Rationale for security objectives (S6),

  • Ethical principles, codes of practice, law and regulation (K8, K9),

  • Preventing security breaches & continuous improvement (S9, S15),

  • Following organisations policies and processes (K6, S7), and

  • Operation of security management systems & incident response (K7, K15)

There is only a single pathway in the Level 4 Data Analyst apprenticeship standard

There is only a single pathway in the Level 4 DevOps Engineer apprenticeship standard

There is only a single pathway in the Level 4 Network Engineer apprenticeship standard.

There is only a single pathway in the Level 4 Software Developer apprenticeship standard.

There is only a single pathway in the Level 4 Software Tester apprenticeship standard.