Today, my wife advanced another major step in her quest to be ordained as a Methodist minister. The amount of preparatory work for this big day was similar to what I have seen with consulting firm senior managers who are up for partner and with professors being considered for tenure – it’s that serious. Ordination is not a requirement to be a preacher, but it is expected if you plan to make the most of your profession.
I got to thinking… “What if we did something similar in BPM land. What if we expected a specific, defined level of due diligence and certification for our top process practitioners?” The idea intrigued me… even though the parallel between ordination and process certification is not a great one – flawed as it is on so many levels. Also, I am not talking about any of the Six Sigma belt kinds of certification here. I am strictly interested in BPM certification that is generic in nature, not tied to a specific methodology (vendor or otherwise), and – in reality – only just emerging as a topic of credible interest. Brett Champlin, head of the ABPMP, and I recorded a few podcasts last year on BPM certification. We agreed that BPM certification is a cool idea. But – cool aside – is it something you consider of value? When the time comes, and certification has legs, is it something for you?
Thoughts?
3 responses so far ↓
1 David McCoy // Mar 18, 2009 at 12:38 pm
My wife offered the following comment that she has allowed me to post. I think she should work in BPM; she makes sense.
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Neat idea. Certainly, any field that takes its subject seriously requires some form of certification, especially from a “standards” basis. In the ordination process, the certification process begins with statements of why people want to do this in the first place. Although BPM probably has no divinely compelling reasons to enter the field (or it might… who knows?) it is always useful to find out, “Why do I think this is a good idea in the first place?” and “Is this the best for me?” If those are answered with any sort of conviction or with any degree of seriousness, then the next step is “How much training am I willing to subject myself to in order to be the best at what I do?” After all, if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well (someone else said it first).
The next step in the process is to have a team qualified to measure those entering the process of certification by certain predetermined standards. What are the “Core Competencies” that you would consider to be essentials for experts to know? Come up with the standards, then make certain that those you certify measure up. This does not have to be an intimidating process, but can be encouraging on the part of the team. After all, you are trying to help others succeed, because the better they do their jobs, the better off you are as a whole. (Weak links, etc).
The final process is to actually give a designation for those who pass all of the qualifications – to give them a stamp of certification saying that they have passed certain levels of knowledge and that you as a certifying body have complete confidence that they meet the required expectations of leadership. That doesn’t mean that they are “practically perfect in every way” but that they show a competent level of knowledge and have an interest in “going on to perfection” – of continuing to grow in their knowledge and expertise.
2 Lee Vella // May 18, 2009 at 8:30 pm
It’s strange that people think having a certification is the best way to judge whether somebody has the skills to do a job.
I personally know people with Project Management certifications who are terrible PM’s; Project Managers who are incredible PM’s with no formal qualifications (some have no tertiary education, none!!); people with university Arts Degrees who are amazing programmers; people who are parents (both good and bad) that have never gained a “parent certification” and people who have a driving license who are in fact dangerous on the road !!!
There is no certification that can beat experience.
But if you do pursue this, then I would be more likely to say that BPM is a part of a Business Analysts core skill set as process mapping is used to analyse the business !!
3 Peter // Sep 15, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Certification should be something that is a measure of both training and experience. Regardless of whether the training is done in a formal classroom or on the “street”. Certification programs that allow the student to attain the highest level within a short period of time are of little use to me. Training must be tempered with actual experience and any certification program must allow for that.
I would definitely be interested in seeing a certification program for BPM but to Lee’s point, it can’t be just a series of training courses that can be taken one after another without some element of having to prove you can apply the principles in a business setting.
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