As I highlighted to in a previous post, my colleague of mine, Daniel Berinson, has published an article called Innovation and Practice in Software and Systems Engineering. In the article, Berinson discusses accreditations. Accreditations for Software Engineers is an interesting topic. There are a ready supply of arguments for and against the proposal. I think there is a lot of benefit in having accreditations for Software Engineers, but the accreditation must actually mean something. Most people who have been in IT for a long time, say >10 years, are bound to have come across someone that has an accreditation but has no idea what they're doing. An accreditation should mean that you're competent to perform the role that you've been accredited with. A lack of competence undermines the value of the accreditation for all people with the same accreditation.
This for me is where accreditation gets murky. To what standard should the accreditiation be set? How often should accreditations be renewed and what is the renewal criteria? Should there be multiple levels of accredition? These are questions that I don't have complete answers for.
I think that there should be multiple levels of accredition. I completed the PRINCE2 Foundation certification for project management last year. I plan to complete the PRINCE2 Practioner certification which is the higher of the two. The Practioner certification requires recertification every few years to ensure consistency. Do I need one or the other to continue working as a project manager? No - not at the moment at least. Why did I do it? Primarily to increase my expertise in Project Management and to differentiate me from other project managers. I paid good money to do the training course so I want my accreditation to mean something. I don't want people who are good at rote learning to be able to achieve it because that devalues the accreditation and me with it.
I believe that each accreditation should have a code of ethics linked to it. A code of ethics provides guideance for conducting ourselves. I try to follow the ACM/IEEE Code of Ethics in my professional life. The pressures of life and doing business often cause conflicts with the code, so should we have a stated code of ethics that we adhere to? I think so. For one thing, it lets people know what standards we set for ourselves and what is likely to be applied to them as a result. As a practioner of Karate, not only do I want to be able to demonstrate physical ability but I also want to display the values of karate in my daily life. This is important to me because it reflects on me as an individual and karate in general. If I were to use my martial arts ability to cause mayhem and injury then people I meet will associate violence with karate, but if I can demonstrate the dedication, discipline, etc that I have inside the dojo then karate will be seen in a different light. When I am awarded my black belt I will have achieved an accreditation and it means something important, it defines what is expected of me and what I can reasonably expect from other black belts. It also sets the standard at which the quality of black belts within the club are viewed by both insiders and outsiders, it shows what our club stands for.
Considering your code of ethics is a healthy exercise. I believe that in the long run people with a strong basis in their code of ethics are more likely to succeed because of consistency of purpose. Give it some thought, I think you'll find it rewarding.