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Added 24/09/2025

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  1. Don’t go into too much detail in your proposal document about the project outputs. It will just make you more stressed when you realise you have been too ambitious.
  2. In the mapping documents, have one mapping for each KSB and two for those that have a distinction criterion. more than that may confuse you and may confuse the assessor.
  3. Do not map a piece of evidence that is weak and don’t think that having two mappings will help you. Two weak pieces of evidence will not help you more than going back and improving one piece of evidence before submitting.
  4. For each mapping, reference the section number and title in the portfolio you want to refer to and (in brackets) add a very short key phrase to remind you what you want to talk about.
  5. If your evidence is weak, particularly in the project report, the assessor will come back and ask you about it, sometimes repeatedly, if they don’t get the response they want. Weak evidence leads to more stressful discussions. When you get feedback on your portfolio and report (AI or otherwise), if you are given feedback that you have not covered a KSB effectively, go back and rewrite your portfolio or report until you are happy with it.
  6. Don’t worry if you don’t do much testing at work. Add some tests to your own code regardless. This shows initiative. The assessor is likely to cut you a lot of slack for anything you do that is not required by your workplace.
  7. Make a crib sheet of words and phrases that are used in the KSBs and make sure that you understand and use them, e.g. “product life cycle” and “data structure”. Using and explaining these words and phrases needs to be second nature to you.
  8. Make a list of the libraries and frameworks you have used and think about the differences between them. This is the sort of thing that lifts a pass to a distinction.
  9. “Pros and cons” is a favourite phrase used when assessors are probing for distinction-level responses from you. They want to know that you have critical judgement about the tools you use and the decisions you make.