My experience as an Open CITS Certification Board Member
The Open Group Certified IT Specialist (Open CITS) certification program — formerly ITSC — is an independent global certification program for qualifying the skills, knowledge and experience of IT specialists. Accepted and applicable worldwide, from a wide range of organizations in more than 50 countries worldwide. Capgemini’s internal Software Engineering Certification Program is an Accredited Certification Program and adheres to the Open CITS Certification Policy and Open CITS Accreditation Policy. Certified Software Engineers on levels 2 and up benefit from the accreditation, because it provides them the opportunity to attain Open CITS certification with a little extra effort. The Open CITS certificate represents an ideal mechanism for Capgemini’s Software Engineers to demonstrate knowledge, success and overall business capabilities outside Capgemini.
The Open CITS program requires applicants to demonstrate skills and experience against a set of conformance requirements through written applications and peer interviews. There are no training courses to attend, and no written exams to complete. However the Open CITS program requires candidates, who are not able to leverage an accredited certification program, to submit a comprehensive certification package detailing their skills and experience gained on working on IT projects to the CITS Certification Authority, followed by a rigorous peer review process. The Open CITS Certification Board is responsible for executing this process and membership is by invitation only. Capgemini software engineers certified on level 3 and 4 might be approached by the Global SE Community Leadership with the question if they would like to consider to join the CITS Certification Board. In June 2010 Richard Challis, who was already residing on the board, recommended me to the authority as a candidate member, after which the authority invited me to join. I was honored by the invitation and I accepted my membership to the board without hesitation.
The Open CITS certification process itself basically consists of three stages. After a certification package has been submitted a board member reviews the package in stage one. The Open CITS certification policy is very strict: all certification requirements have to be met, no exceptions. Every candidate I’ve reviewed myself was not able to pass this tollgate on the first try. Across the board the experience is the same, which is hardly a surprise given the very specific and strict requirements for the 30 page package. Fortunately for the candidate the certification process allows the candidate to update the package, in those cases the reviewer is confident the candidate should be able to pass the tollgate with some enhancements to the package. For me as a board member this is a great opportunity to provide feedback to the candidate to enable him to create a package which gives him the best possible point of departure for stage two of the process.
Stage two of the process is the Board Evaluation. Compared to Capgemini’s internal process this stage is very demanding for both candidate and board member. While during our internal process the certification board conducts a single interview with each candidate as a group, the CITS procedure is more demanding. Each candidate will be assessed by a board consisting of three members. Each member has a 1 hour individual interview with the candidate, who is asked to amplify his certification request and clarify any gaps the board member may have discovered during his review of the accepted certification package. The three one hour interviews are very demanding for the candidate, but I myself as a board member is not spared either. I may have to prepare and conduct up to 5 interviews during a session of the certification board, which may require me a couple of days to review up to 150 pages of certification packages and prepare my questions for each of the interviews.
The final stage three is the Board Approval step. During a board-confidential consensus meeting held on the same day as the interview the board members discuss each candidate individually. Leveraging the information in the certification package and the observations during the interview each member provides feedback whether or not the candidate should be accepted. Finally the three members take a vote. The candidate is accepted by majority vote. In case of decline the board unfortunately has to provide feedback to the candidate about the rational for the decision. In most case we will encourage the candidate to reapply for certification in due course once he gained the professional software engineering experience required for CITS certification.
Even though my CITS certification board membership is not without obligations, the work and effort required is very satisfying. Not only provide my duties for the certification board me with the opportunity to affirm my professional skills with regard to providing professional feedback and interviewing professional peers. I also get the opportunity extend my own professional knowledge with the insights I gain from the professional knowledge and experience expressed and illustrated by the candidates, when they talk about their own work as an IT professional for organizations from all over the world. It’s needless to say the membership enhances my professional network as well. And bottom line: How often does one usually get the chance to intensively talk shop with professional peers outside Capgemini about his or her insights and point of views for an hour? There are only a few things which compare to sharing once professional passion for IT amongst peers and at the same time uphold and improve the professionalism of the individuals which make up the global IT Community.
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