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Certifications: Is Volume Diluting Value?
Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.
Today it seems that you can get a certification in just about anything IT-related. What is troublesome though is the continual erosion of what a certificate represents. As a Certified Public Accountant, I have a deep appreciation of the effort, study, practice and sacrifice it took to obtain my certification and to maintain it (four-year degree in business, multi-day exam, two years field experience, 40 hours a year of continuing education).
For a certification in any discipline to truly represent value, it needs to require more than a few hours of classroom time and the passing of an exam. The IT community in actuality is hurting itself with the flood of certifications that are out there. In the dumbing down of the requirements and with the lack of professional governing bodies, being a certified anything loses its impact. Yet employers associate a certification with a basic level of competency and professionalism within the given discipline.
In the beginning there was the PMP (Project Management Professional), which to this day is a certificate with some meaning and importance. Then came the Six Sigma certifications, from yellow belt to master black belt--again, rigorous and distinguishing at the black belt level.
Certification Magazine lists over 100 different IT-related certification areas. Many of the certifications are vendor specific.
The certification business is…
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