1 Day Online

Principles of Generative AI for Software Professionals

A practical foundation in generative AI for business analysts and software testers, focusing on how AI actually behaves and how it changes professional work.

Rather than approaching AI as a tool to be mastered through templates, techniques, or prompt engineering, the course centers on judgment, evaluation, and shared understanding. Participants work directly with generative AI from the start, using familiar analysis and testing tasks to reset common assumptions. The course explores how AI builds and revises a model of the problem, and how common artifacts—such as requirements, scenarios, and tests—act as different views into that shared understanding.

Why This Course

This course begins with experience, not theory. Participants start by working directly with generative AI on realistic analysis and testing tasks. Rather than teaching fixed prompts or patterns, the course emphasizes ongoing interaction and prioritizes judgment over memorization. It provides a grounded alternative to tool-driven or hype-driven approaches by clarifying how generative AI changes the nature of professional responsibility.

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Course Details

  • Duration
    1 Day online
  • Format
    Hands-on exercises with direct AI interaction on realistic tasks
  • Audience
    Business analysts, software testers, practitioners preparing for AI-focused training

What You'll Be Able to Do

1

Explain what generative AI is and what it is not

2

Describe how different assumptions about AI behavior lead to different outcomes

3

Recognize how generative AI builds and revises an internal model of a problem

4

See how different artifacts reflect a shared underlying understanding

5

Work with AI through iterative dialogue over multiple turns

6

Refine, correct, and redirect AI output as understanding evolves

7

Identify gaps, assumptions, inconsistencies, and confidently wrong output

8

Use disagreement and error as signals to test understanding

9

Compare outputs from different AI models to surface blind spots

10

Reconcile differing AI perspectives into a more coherent understanding

11

Decide when AI output is useful input for further reasoning

12

Decide when professional judgment calls for setting AI output aside

13

Enter AI for Business Analysis or AI for Software Testing courses with a shared foundation

14

Share a common vocabulary for discussing AI behavior and professional responsibility

Upcoming Sessions

No upcoming dates. Inquire for details.

Course Outline

1

What's Generative AI?

This module resets common assumptions about generative AI by examining what it is not. Participants work directly with AI to experience why treating it as a search engine, programming language, or database leads to confusion, and why a different mental model is required. The module establishes that confidence and fluency do not imply correctness, and that prompts are not simply queries or commands.

Objectives

  • Distinguish generative AI from search engines, programming languages, and databases
  • Observe how AI responds to questions, instructions, and corrections
  • Recognize why confidence and fluency do not imply correctness
  • Identify the limits of treating prompts as queries or commands
  • Begin forming a more accurate mental model of AI behavior

Exercise

Interact with generative AI using familiar questions and tasks, observe where expectations break down, and reflect on what those breakdowns reveal about the nature of generative AI.

2

One Problem, Many Views

This module introduces the idea that generative AI builds a model of the problem and produces different artifacts as views into that shared understanding. Participants explore how requirements, scenarios, and tests relate to one another and what happens when understanding changes. The focus shifts from editing documents to refining shared understanding.

Objectives

  • Recognize that AI maintains an internal model of the problem
  • See how different artifacts reflect the same underlying understanding
  • Observe how changes to understanding affect multiple outputs
  • Identify misalignment between artifacts as a signal, not a mistake
  • Shift from editing documents to refining shared understanding

Exercise

Generate multiple artifacts from the same AI conversation, introduce a targeted correction, and observe how changes propagate across those artifacts.

3

When AI Is Confidently Wrong

This module examines what happens when AI produces plausible but incorrect or inconsistent output. By comparing results from different AI models, participants learn to treat disagreement and hallucinations as diagnostic signals that reveal gaps and assumptions. The emphasis is on using inconsistency to surface assumptions and test understanding rather than simply chasing correctness.

Objectives

  • Identify confidently wrong or invented AI output
  • Compare outputs from multiple AI models on the same problem
  • Recognize disagreement as a source of insight
  • Use inconsistency to surface assumptions and missing information
  • Test and refine understanding rather than chasing correctness

Exercise

Ask multiple AI systems to address the same problem, compare their outputs, and use points of disagreement to improve the shared understanding of the problem.

4

How AI Changes Professional Work

The final module brings the previous ideas together to examine how generative AI changes the nature of professional responsibility. As AI takes over routine transformation, gaps in understanding surface faster and misalignment becomes harder to ignore. Participants clarify where human accountability remains essential and reframe professional competence around shared understanding.

Objectives

  • Recognize how AI shifts work from production to judgment
  • Understand why misalignment surfaces earlier with AI
  • Clarify where human accountability remains essential
  • Decide when to continue working with AI and when to intervene directly
  • Reframe professional competence around shared understanding

Exercise

Determine how AI fits into your own role, using the insights from earlier modules to recognize where judgment is required, where responsibility remains human, and how your understanding of professional work has evolved.

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