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SCALING TECH SKILLS: THE AGILE APPROACH BEHIND OUR COURSES
Why scaling tech skills matters now
If you’re responsible for building tech capability inside an organisation, this probably feels familiar…
By the time a new technology becomes business-critical, the training designed to support it is already lagging behind. Roles shift mid-project. And regulations land after programmes have been signed off.
Most organisations don’t just struggle to hire tech talent. They struggle to keep skills relevant once people are in roles.
That’s the reality we see every day at Code First Girls. It’s why we don’t treat tech skills development as a static exercise. We treat it as something that needs to move at the same pace as modern delivery teams.
We build curriculum the way good product teams build software: close to users, informed by real-world demand, and designed to evolve. This is how we help organisations scale tech skills quickly, without cutting corners or losing trust in quality.
How do we develop courses at speed (without sacrificing quality)?
Fast training only works when it is grounded in reality.
Our course rollouts follow a simple four-step model that keeps us close to what is actually happening inside organisations, rather than what looked important 18 months ago.
Insight → R&D → Curriculum activation → Fast launch
It is evidence-led, industry-aligned, and designed for employers navigating constant change.
Step one: How we spot emerging skills needs
Every course starts with listening. Not desk research alone, but live, ongoing conversations across industry, education and our learner community.
What we hear from employers:
We work with over 130 organisations across 12 markets. On a daily basis, our Client Success team speaks with tech, HR and transformation leaders about what is changing inside their teams.
“AI adoption is accelerating faster than expected.”
“Cloud programmes stall due to capability gaps.”
“Cyber resilience shifts from important to board-level urgent.”
These conversations are not theoretical. Clients share upcoming projects, anticipated skills shortages and where delivery risk is starting to appear. That insight directly shapes what we build next.
What we hear from senior tech leaders:
Our Tech Advisory Board provides unfiltered input on how roles are changing, where regulation is heading, and which skills will become non-negotiable. This helps us design for what organisations will need next, not just what they needed to hire for last quarter.
What we hear from learners:
Through more than 300,000 learning opportunities, we receive constant feedback on what women want to learn, where confidence drops, and which formats actually work alongside full-time roles. This matters because skills programmes only succeed when employee motivation and employer demand meet in the middle.
What we see in education:
Our partnerships with over 100 universities give us visibility into academic curricula and, just as importantly, where they stop short. This is often in applied AI, real-world cyber scenarios and modern cloud environments.
This is where Code First Girls sits, bridging the gap between education and industry.
Step two: Turning Insight into action
We analyse market demand, hiring patterns, and evolving job roles to pinpoint where skills are needed most and will remain relevant. We also factor in regulatory and risk considerations, especially in fast-changing areas like AI governance and cybersecurity, where cutting corners isn’t an option.
Before building the full curriculum, we develop prototypes to make sure the content is practical, the tools work, and learners can actually use the skills on the job.
We then share these prototypes with select clients to gather feedback and make improvements before launching broadly.
Step three: Building courses people actually want to learn
Speed only matters if learners can apply what they have learned the next day.
Our curriculum is built by multidisciplinary teams. That mix is intentional. It ensures courses are technically sound, clearly taught and grounded in real work.
We are deliberate about delivery. Not every skill needs the same format. Some require live labs. Others work best as blended or self-paced learning. Every course is designed around real role requirements, so that it can be applied in the real world.
Before any new course goes public, it is tested in several stages.
We start with internal reviews from the core Code First Girls team, followed by testing with a small group of external stakeholders and subject matter experts to validate technical depth and real-world relevance. In some cases, we then test with a wider group of ambassadors to assess delivery and learner experience at scale.
Only after these stages do we run a public pilot with our community and enterprise clients. By the time a programme launches more widely, it has already been reviewed, tested and iterated on multiple times.
This is how we balance speed with rigour.
Step four: Launching fast, and improving continuously
Because we are not tied to multi-year accreditation cycles, we can update and launch courses when the technology actually changes, not years later.
In practice, that means some clients see new programmes early and use them to support live transformation work. That might be rolling out AI tools, strengthening cyber capability or preparing teams for new regulatory requirements. As those courses run, we learn quickly what is landing well and what needs adjusting, and can make changes accordingly.
That is how we stay close to fast-moving areas like Agentic AI, emerging cyber threats and evolving regulation.
What this means for organisations
For employers, this approach creates real, practical advantages:
You stay ahead of change, rather than reacting after skills gaps appear
You build sustainable tech talent pipelines, from entry-level through to mid-level roles
You get quality at pace, combining startup agility with specialist rigour
It is workforce transformation designed for the world that teams are actually operating in.
Final thoughts
Scaling tech skills isn’t something you tick off once and forget. It’s a constant journey because technology keeps evolving.
That’s why organisations need partners who can keep up – partners who move quickly and help bring their people along every step of the way.
Our agile approach to curriculum is built to do exactly that. To help you move faster, build confidence in your teams, and stay ahead no matter how fast things change.
