Felicity Brand
Florian Weiss, CEO of SkillDisplay GmbH, explains, “We have a lot of walk-ins from individuals who are preparing for the TYPO3 certification. The SkillDisplay platform offers an organized approach to their preparation, and the tree structure helps point them to relevant skills and suggested learning resources. We are proud to introduce expert-defined Doctrine skills to our learning tree”.
For TYPO3 community members, this integration means a deeper dive into industry standards that extend beyond TYPO3. At the same time, Doctrine enthusiasts can now appreciate its role within TYPO3. Florian says that SkillDisplay's vision remains consistent: Welcoming and leveraging open-source projects for upskilling across a wide spectrum of accessible technologies.
About the Partnership
By providing skill definitions as open data on the SkillDisplay platform, the Doctrine Project offers trainers, content creators, companies and certifiers the possibility to rely on a common skill foundation that clearly identifies competencies and learning goals.
All skills are provided as open data, and people are free to copy and use the definitions according to their personal needs like writing a CV, planning a training course, or writing a job offer.
View the Doctrine DBAL and ORM skills (TYPO3 Association members can log in using their my.typo3.org user account):
Doctrine is used by several major PHP frameworks and CMSs, including TYPO3, Symfony, Laravel, and Drupal. Being listed on SkillDisplay means the skill definitions can be used by other software projects that use Doctrine; and in so doing, it will raise awareness of TYPO3 to a new target audience.
Open Source Collaboration
The collaboration with Doctrine would not be possible without Lina Wolf from the TYPO3 Documentation Team. Thanks, Lina! TYPO3 initially connected with Doctrine during the Inter-Project Documentation Sprint and reconnected during the TYPO3 Community Sprint in July 2023. This sprint brought together members of the TYPO3, phpDocumentor, Doctrine and Symfony project teams.
The cooperation sparked during this event through joint documentation efforts inevitably developed beyond documentation into the areas of education and certification.
Many education and certification topics in the TYPO3 ecosystem naturally rely on other open-source technologies, like Doctrine. The event gave the Education Committee the opportunity to connect with Grégoire Paris, from the Doctrine Core Team.
Thanks go to Daniel Fau, for his continuing support and tireless efforts to foster a spirit of collaboration. He is always encouraging people to network and cooperate, and this approach is very good for the TYPO3 community.
Increased Quality of TYPO3 Certification
TYPO3 already has a high standard of quality for certification and proctoring. And with this new partnership, the quality of the TYPO3 certificate has improved even further.
An important part of the certification is the syllabus, which encompasses the learning objectives. While these objectives are initially outlined, they are often refined and finalized by experts involved in the certification process. There is no market standard for this — everyone makes their own soup. For example, Javascript is crucial for specific Microsoft certifications, but while those who create the syllabus have expertise in the field, it is highly likely that the creators of the technology know better. Similarly, for TYPO3 certification, although many may use and understand Doctrine, those directly involved in the Doctrine project, like Grégoire Paris, are better positioned to set accurate learning objectives.
Florian Weiss explains, “To the best of my knowledge, TYPO3 is the first certification that showcases open-source collaboration on a professional certification level”. By partnering with Grégoire, who possesses an in-depth knowledge of defining and ensuring the quality of Doctrine-related skills — spanning both technical mastery and communication nuances — the TYPO3 community has enhanced our certification's quality. Instead of following the trend where some certifications interpret industry standards in their unique ways, TYPO3 has made the deliberate choice to collaborate with recognized domain experts.
About Doctrine
The Doctrine Project is the home to several PHP libraries primarily focused on database storage and object mapping, among them Doctrine DBAL and Doctrine ORM. The libraries have over 500 million downloads and are part of enterprise systems like Symfony, Laravel, TYPO3 CMS, Drupal and many more.
About SkillDisplay
SkillDisplay is a web portal that offers official skill sets and learning paths based on industry certifications, such as those of TYPO3. The platform was enhanced with funding from the European Union’s Eramus+ program (2017–2020) and in collaboration with the TYPO3 Association. In addition to skill sets related to TYPO3, the web portal covers areas such as web technologies, project management, and scrum.
TYPO3 Association members can track their skills for free on SkillDisplay when they log in at my.skilldisplay.eu using their my.typo3.org user account.
Companies can use the platform for in-house employee development and skills management with SkillDisplay’s software as a service (SaaS) option, or the open source extension solution.
Strengthening Open-Source Collaboration
Skill definitions not only allow the Doctrine team to strengthen their foundations in regard to learning and training, but also act as a use case for open-source collaboration beyond code.
If you see synergies or opportunities to coordinate with other open-source projects and technologies, send an email to SkillDisplay at partners(at)skilldisplay.eu.
