 Welcome to this session on professional certification from the open group. You can't have EA for sustainability without certified technical professionals. Am I right? In this video, I'll talk about the open group certification programs and the difference between knowledge and professional certification. I'll talk about the history of professional certification within the open group and the process of experience-based professional certification. Lastly, we'll talk about the value of professional certification to both the individual and adopting organizations. So let's get started. Certification can be a fairly overloaded word, and in the open group, certifications arise from the work our members do to create standards and bodies of knowledge. This includes product certifications, process certifications, and professional certifications. The open group has a really well-defined certification framework against which we define the requirements and the criteria for evaluating certifications. Professional certifications of the open group fall into two different and distinct types. Knowledge-based certification and experience-based certification. Now, knowledge-based certification is probably the most recognized classical form of professional certification. Knowledge-based certification is an assessment of one's knowledge, what they know, of some particular subject that is learned through a training class or even self-study. It's an exam, a test, a test of knowledge. Well, experience-based certification is an assessment of one's experiences. That is what you did. In other words, the practical application of those skills you get certified on or knowledge. We also call this professional certification. Now, we have some fantastic knowledge-based certifications you can take advantage of within the open group. For example, TOGF, IT for IT, ARCHIMATE, and OpenFair to name just a few. And these are knowledge-based certifications. They're really essential in building skills and represent your understanding of a particular subject. The open group partners with accredited training and certification providers, or ATCs, to deliver these knowledge-based certifications, like Pearson Vue, to deliver exams and, credibly, to provide recognition through digital credentials often referred to as badges. Now, here's where I'd like to pause to discuss the history of experience-based professional certification within the open group. In the early 2000s, profession leaders began to discuss the need for standardizing the approach for technical professionalism. Now, many companies had very similar frameworks for growing and recognizing their technical populations, but no external standard existed that could be used to provide organizations or companies when pressed for credibility. The question often being, OK, so your architect or technical specialist is company-certified, and that's great, but against what standard? What does that really mean? Well, we were able to gather the profession leaders together from over 15 major companies and begin the process of defining the requirements in a framework for professional certification. What we found was that all of these programs had more in common than not, and our first profession certification was published in 2004, and we launched open-certified architect program in Times Square, New York, to much fanfare. Since then, we've added professional certifications for technical specialists, data scientists, and supply chain security professionals. The open group profession certifications lend credibility to the credentialing process of an organization's technical population and puts them on par with other accredited professions like accountants, lawyers, doctors, and the like, and all of these professions have similar approaches for what it means to be professional. They complete accredited knowledge-based training and certifications along with practical assessments that evaluate your ability to effectively apply that knowledge through experience. We really felt this was the missing link for the tech industry to be able to attract, retain, and grow talent. I know I was there, and I was one of those technical executives who helped create the standard. So what is the process we use to evaluate experience and become professionally certified within the open group? What we're really doing is breaking up the career of a technical professional into three major phases, which translate into certification levels. A level one certification, the candidate's experience is evaluated against their ability to understand the foundation of their profession to perform on their own but with supervision from other more senior professionals. And at level two, the professional has mastered the state of the art and are able to lead projects and perform without guidance. That's why we call it master certified. And at level three, distinguished, the professional has not only mastered the practices, but are extending the state of the art through leadership to grow the profession itself. These are often technical executives within companies. Now, professional experience-based certification is a peer review process against the certification criteria for a specific level. And each candidate is evaluated by a board of peers who have been certified themselves. Now, when we first started open professional certification, we had what we called a monolithic package. All the experience and criteria were documented with evidence in one package and then submitted for review by the board. However, after about 15 years of running the program this way, our members again came together to rethink the process and make it more aligned to the journey a candidate takes as they progress through their career. And as a result, we broke the criteria down into chunks that could be attained more incrementally, more easily consumed. It's what we call milestones. Now, each milestone provides a candidate with a badge as a form of recognition. They are one more step closer to becoming certified at a particular level. There are two main routes to obtain profession certifications, either directly through the open group, what we call the direct certification route, or by accredited certification partners, an organization that manages their own instance of the certification program. Now, ACPs are accredited by the open group and they follow the same process for certification as the direct program, but they can add additional requirements that may be important to their organization. For example, requirements for specific knowledge, education, or even experience. This allows an ACP to retain their secret sauce or even add evolving industry skills where necessary. Well, all while maintaining the same high level standard as the direct certification route. Now, the open group's profession certification provides a portable credential that is recognized across the industry as the gold standard. And you can get your certification while working for an ACP and still retain that credential after leaving. Or vice versa, obtain your certification and join an ACP organization. I know they'd love to have someone that's already certified. Now, candidates are certified for three years after which time they must recertify. And what they're going to do is they're actually going to show that they're continuing to practice in the profession during those three years. Okay, so let's take a closer look at how this stepwise certification or milestone certification process works within the open group. Now, each profession requires a similar set of base badges, which include professional communication and professional development or training, and three different certification profiles. You know, what we realized was that there were some very common requirements for being recognized as a professional just at large, even across the non-technical professions. And that is the ability to communicate what you know and the ability to be a continuous learner. So all profession certifications have milestone requirements for professional communication and development. It doesn't matter if you're a lawyer or a doctor or a technical professional. So then comes in our certification program the additional three experience profiles. These are separate experiences that meet the conformance requirements at each level for a particular profession. They embody the evidence that the candidate can perform against the required level's conformance criteria. Now, once again, an ACP may include additional requirements specific to their organization, but they may not change or obviate the base criteria that is evaluated in the direct certification route. This is so that we can maintain portability between the direct route and an ACP route. Okay, so another closer look at this stepwise path to certification includes kind of a view of where the milestones are and where the certification application comes into the picture. So let's look at this. We have professional certification, professional development, the three profiles. And before it goes to the board, the candidate submits what's called a experience application form. Now this experience application form is really another step in the certification process that pulls together that gives a holistic view of their experiences across all of these experience profiles and projects that they're on, right? So this is necessary for them to meet all of the conformance criteria and the standard itself. Now then it's submitted to the board review for certification and hopefully you get certified after that. So the first certification program that we launched was OpenCA that eventually became part of the overall open professions framework. Now some professions have specific domains or areas of expertise. Within OpenCA we call these disciplines. For OpenCA this includes the digital architecture discipline, the business discipline, business architecture discipline, enterprise architecture, and solution architecture discipline. While there aren't any specific training courses that are required and no written exams, we do recommend getting a career coach and some mentoring. It's necessary to really understand the long-term implications of becoming professionally certified as you progress through your career. OpenCA currently has three different levels of certification, certified architect, master certified architect, and distinguished architect. Similarly, open certified technical specialists are certified currently at three different levels, certified technical specialist, master certified technical specialist, and distinguished technical specialist. And unlike architects that have disciplines in their professional certification, in this standard we have specializations. And as you can imagine there are quite a few technical specialties in the technical profession including application development and application integration and business analysis and data platform, security, server. I mean there's a bunch of them here because the majority of the technical professionals are specialists. So this is a really broad number of specialties that have their core criteria defined as specializations. Say that a few times, it's a tongue twister. Now one of the more recent additions to the open profession certification portfolio is the open certified data scientist. OpenCDS has been developed out of a requirement of the IT sector and organizations and academic institutions to verify that data scientists and professionals, those professionals have the qualities and capabilities required to produce effective analysis of data to the overall improvement of business. It's a really important field right now. And it did warrant actually having a separate professional certification because the criteria was so specific and tailored to the data scientist. Now remember how I was saying currently there are three levels, blah, blah, blah. So as an example of how we continue to evolve the open profession standards, the openCDS team is piloting a new level of professional certification. This new level will come out and be a level of certification prior to level one or certified data scientist and provide an associate certification. Now the objective of this is just another way the team is looking to help drive growth of technical professionals across their careers and accelerate the number of certified data scientists. And we're going to see how this works. I think it's going to turn out really well. So stay tuned as far as that goes. So it's fantastic that everyone is so excited about the open profession certification program. But really what is the industry saying? What is the business value? Now the foot report tracks the value of technology and technical profession certifications. And they have consistently found that the open profession certifications, openCA and openSITS especially, were the highest recognized professional certifications. We got a few others in there that are mentioned from the open group like TOGEV. But in fact these are the only professional certifications that evaluate a candidate's level of real world experience. So a portable professional certification based on experience. What's not to like from an individual? I mean it's fantastic. But what do companies and organizations get out of a portable professional certification credential? Or becoming an ACP, an accredited certification partner? Well first it's a standard that provides a level playing field when evaluating the performance of technical professionals. It's an industry recognized credential that can be used to better identify past perform resources for example in consulting and public sector bids. Which is a government requirement in many localities. And it's a process that defines the bar for promotion and enables diversity and fairness in the promotion process. And most importantly we found that companies and organizations that have adopted the open profession certifications, they retain better performing employees. And subsequently this helps attract better talent. Because a talented recruit immediately recognizes the value of becoming a professionally certified technical professional and having a career path. So every professionally certified candidate receives a digital certification badge within the open group. And at the open group we have fully embraced digital credentials to support certification recognition. I think it's a really really important part of the process for becoming certified. You know as an individual it helps you communicate your accomplishments from an employer's point of view. You're able to use them because it's metadata to find the right people on LinkedIn or candidates for opportunities. And it's another way for people to recognize accredited training courses and programs in general. It's just a really great way of having a full circle process from recognition to recruitment. So by now hopefully I've piqued your attention and got you excited about becoming professionally certified. Here are some links to help you start on your journey. I strongly suggest you listen to other videos and speakers in this track as they will be providing you with very heartfelt personal stories about their journey through the process of becoming professionally certified. And I want to say thank you for listening. May you find a mentor that inspires your career to begin the process of professional certification. Goodbye. Just one more plug. Don't forget to listen to those other folks talking about professional certification. Thanks. Bye.