Certification Team starts working on the certification process

Categories: Education & Certification Created by Sander Vogels
Arnhem, August 25 - Last week the newly formed Certification Team of the TYPO3 Association for the first time met face to face in Munich, Germany. In a two-day session the team took the first steps on the road to certification. The goal of the certification process was defined, <link http: association.typo3.org>the team was structured into three sub teams, the teams' agenda for the upcoming months was defined including a time line and a rough draw of the process was made. But first an explanation of why the team was formed, why the TYPO3 Association thinks Certification is a good idea and what we want to certify.

Background
In recent years TYPO3 has been growing fiercely, from a very good basic system into an extended enterprise capable CMS. The community has grown from 25 young programmers in 2000 to tens of thousands of community members in 2006 in over 65 countries and with it the number of TYPO3 'integrators' also in the thousands. For clients or prospects it becomes more and more difficult to judge the competence of such an integrator Is he worth the tariffs asked, does he have the right skills and experience needed for the job? In most competence fields of the IT business developers and their companies at least can be judged by their certificates. If someone is a certified J2EE developer you're to a certain extend able to assess what he or she is able to accomplish. In the Open Source field in recent years also projects became aware of this necessity so we now have for example Certificates for Linux or MySQL developers. As one of the major players in the eCMS market TYPO3 has to live up with this thrive for quality. It is good for clients and so it is for the reputation of TYPO3 which on its turn will have a positive effect on all companies and freelancers implementing the system. So it was decided by the board of the TYPO3 Association to take action. After a selection process out of a number of volunteers from the TYPO3 Association Supporting members team members were selected and the team was formed.

Goal
The TYPO3 Certification Team has nine members from Austria, Denmark, Germany, Holland and Switzerland so it's really internationally orientated.
After extensive deliberation the goal of the certification process has been defined as follows:
'TYPO3-Certification helps to improve the quality of TYPO3 centered Services'. So TYPO3 certificates will enable the certificate-holder to demonstrate his level of TYPO3 knowledge and quality of Services offered and allows clients/externals to distinguish between different kinds of TYPO3-service-levels.
There will be two certification tracks, one for individuals and one for companies. This will be organised in a manner that every TYPO3-experienced free-lancer or company has the chance to become TYPO3 certified.

Timeline
To work out these different tracks the team has split up in three sub teams, one for individuals, one for companies and one that will manage the complete administrative process. In the upcoming months the sub teams will develop a rough outline of the certification process they're working on, although lots of details will already be taken into account for consideration. During T3CON the Certification Team will have its second meeting where the results of the sub teams will be discussed within the complete team. During that meeting the current outlook on the roadmap of the complete process will be finalized into a concrete roadmap towards certification. It's now expected that certification will start no earlier then Spring 2007 for individuals. For companies it'll start a few months later since having certified TYPO3 professionals employed will be an important criteria for sure.

More information about the team and the progress it's making with the certification process can be read on the Association's pages on typo3.org.

TYPO3 Association / Certification Team
association.typo3.org/committees/quality-control/projects/certification/
For information please send an email to <link>certification@typo3.org