BE(A)ST – an agile approach to discover, experiment, and learn

Abstract

Nowadays, careers are becoming a series of ‘temporal projects’ that serve personal and professional development. Future employees, in order to be eff ective and effi cient in career design, should be able to quickly prototype, test, and revise professional development plans in an agile and continuous manner. Th erefore, modern career developers need a proper mindset, framework, and set of tools. Th is new way of thinking about career and undertaking professional development actions should be shaped as early as possible, preferably already during formal education at the university, if not earlier. Th is chapter presents the foundations of the BE Aware STudent approach (BE(A)ST). It takes into consideration the discussion on the dynamics of job market changes and its infl uence on career development as outlined in Chapter 1. Th e conclusions from the previous chapter show that career development nowadays can be considered as a wicked problem. Th ese insights have set the stage for the main motivations, objectives, and structure of the BE(A)ST approach, as well as the key benefi ts to all stakeholders. Th e chapter also presents comparative analysis that has been carried out with regard to BE(A)ST vs. traditional and modern career development frameworks foundations. As the BE(A)ST methodology is fully agile and user-centric, the fi nal part of the chapter discusses its innovativeness in these areas from the perspective of Design Th inking and Agile frameworks.