Introduction to the TYPO3 Consultant Certification

Categories: Education & Certification Created by Peter Pröll

tl;dr

  • The TYPO3 CMS Certified Consultant (TCCC) now completes the TYPO3 CMS Certified series for TYPO3 professionals.
  • The first possibility to take the exam is during <link>TYPO3 CertiFUNcation on June, 9th.
  • Beforehand we will offer a syllabus online, a book and a one-day seminar to help you with your preparation.
  • Fill in the form if you want to get informed in time: <link https: www.surveymonkey.de r dtbr8g3 _blank>www.surveymonkey.de/r/DTBR8G3
Read the full story with all information (8 mins):
In 2008 the TYPO3 Association begun to certify TYPO3 Integrators. In 2016 the certification program was extended with a certification for editors and one for developers. Now in 2017, we complete our certification program for individuals with the consultant certification and thus having set the base for further certifications for agencies and training institutes.
In 2014 the TYPO3 Association founded the Education Committee. On our first sprint in Schleiden-Gemünd at <link https: alinbu.net _blank>Alinbu Consulting, we decided to have a full range certification program for individuals. After we had finalized the editor certification and the developer certification it was time to get the consultant certification going. In 2015 and 2016 we had sprints in Hamburg at <link http: www.f7.de _blank>F7 to lay down the base concept as well as near Freiburg at <link http: nimius.net _blank>NIMIUS and Vienna at <link https: skilldisplay.at _blank>SkillDisplay to start with the question base. In January 2017 we met in Heidelberg at the office of <link http: www.moritzkrauss.de>Moritz Krauss and managed to have the raw question base ready.
The team who put together questions of all sorts of objectives in alphabethical order: Robert Barnebeck, Jan von Beckerath, Mario Hirschfeld, Attila János, Moritz Krauss, Patrick Lobacher, Gernot Ploiner, Peter Pröll, Tom Novotny, Flo Weiss, Marc Willmann, and Andreas Wolf. They worked on it during the sprints and in their spare time to build up the question base. Thanks so much for your time and efforts!!
Currently, the questions are in technical review by Andreas Wolf, Marc Willmann, and Peter Pröll who are coming up with a book for your certification preparation as well. After that, they have to go through a language review. The questions already are in the English language, yet they need to be thoroughly checked by native speakers. If you feel like helping us here, please contact Peter (<link>peter@typo3.org), or get in touch via the #edu-cert-consultant channel in TYPO3 Slack (<link forger.typo3.org slack>forger.typo3.org/slack).

Target Audience of the Consultant Certification

The TYPO3 CMS Certified Consultant exam addresses everybody who is consulting customers with their TYPO3 projects: Consultants, project managers, and product owners in the TYPO3 ecosystem. The certification shows that you have a decent understanding in this field for facilitating projects of a decent size. 

Which objectives will be tested?

The following objectives are planned to be part of the exam. There is still some final shifting and re-wording, but these descriptions should give you a good idea of what lies ahead:
  • "General Basics" is about the TYPO3 ecosystem and community as well as the trademark and resources to find the information you need.
  • "Overview of TYPO3 and its terminology", i.e. knowing the difference between an extension and a plugin, thus knowing how to communicate with your developers.
  • Show your knowledge of "Possibilities and limitations of TYPO3" and thus being able to consult your customers by the planning of their projects.
  • Knowing "TYPO3 versions and the TYPO3 development roadmap" is important to be able to plan maintenance and upgrade cycles.
  • In professional projects "Administration and Support" is a crucial facet. It has to be taken into account right from the very beginning of the project.
  • "Project Management" has changed a lot in the last years, and for professional projects of a decent size agile project management (Kanban, Scrum) is state of the art and is the focus of this objective.
  • The "Development Workflow" is about how to deliver professional projects. As a consultant you do not need to know the details, nor set any systems up. You should be aware the basics of possible development workflows, deployment, unit tests, behavioral tests and more.
  • Most professional TYPO3 projects include "Third Party Services" and their integration. This objective is addressing the basics as far as a consultant has to be aware of them.
  • "Extensions" are an important part of TYPO3. You can find extensions for your projects in the TER. Often enough they need to be adapted, or extensions have to be custom made for your project. Know your way around extensions, be able to do a rough extension audit and know what to pay attention to when planning projects with extensions.
  • The "Search engines" objective brings a focussed view on extensions and third party integration when it comes to website search. All a consultant should know about TYPO3 search extensions as well as third party solutions like Solr or Elastic Search.
  • "Server and Network Infrastructure" is an important objective for projects of a decent size. All about load balancing, high availability, content delivery networks and more, as far as it addresses the needs of a consultant.
  • "Security" is viable for every internet project. Thus taking into account security as a feature of your project is important for a good consultant.
  • Knowledge of "Maintenance and SLA Management" will allow a consultant to do the transition from project production to project operation.
  • "Licences, Legal Rights, and Obligations" covers general knowledge about software licenses as far as it concerns TYPO3.

Where to take the exam

The world premiere of the TYPO3 CMS Certified Consult exam will be a paper-based test at our <link>2017 CertiFUNcation event on June, 9th in Phantasialand near Cologne. And after? Currently, the TYPO3 Association is delivering exams in different ways. Pearson VUE testing centers around the globe are offering the integrator exam. The editor exam is available for online certification. The developer certification is currently only available as a paper based exam at some TYPO3 events. One of the Education Committee's main focusses in 2017 is to provide a single, stable, and convenient platform for all TYPO3 certifications and professionalize the overall workflow connected to this. Our goal is to have it installed by the end of this year. Until then both, the developer and the consultant certification will be only available as paper-based exams at chosen TYPO3 events. Fill in the form, and we will keep you up to date with info on locations and dates of exam events: <link https: www.surveymonkey.de r dtbr8g3>www.surveymonkey.de/r/DTBR8G3 

How to prepare your exam

Our goal is not to make it hard to get through the exam. Our goal is to have a lot of consultants prove their skills and thus having a vibrant and highly qualified professional TYPO3 ecosystem. Thus we offer various ways for you to prepare your exam, and all these will be available before CertiFUNcation 2017:
  • We will publish the final syllabus soon (~late March)
  • There will be a book "TYPO3 CMS Certified Consultant" (~ April) 
  • We are preparing one-day preparation seminars over Europe (~late April)
Fill in this form, and we let you know as soon as these are available: <link https: www.surveymonkey.de r dtbr8g3>www.surveymonkey.de/r/DTBR8G3 
If you have further questions, contact Peter (<link>peter@typo3.org).