Yellow jersey
Yellow Jersey is Acquia's code-name for it's forthcoming training and certification program. For an intro, check out Jay's and Chuck's blog posts about it.
Through the summer, the Yellow Jersey project had to rest a bit while we attended to some other priorities. Recently, we've started to move the program forward again. Robert Douglass joined a panel discussion at Drupalcon Szeged which discussed common approaches the community can take toward formalizing and measuring Drupal knowledge. In addition to the community effort, Robert will also be working to improve the technical information available on our site and to our subscribers.
As we define our certification programs, we're keeping using our past experience to guide what we deliver. Jay likes the Cisco career certification program. Jeff likes the Adobe ones (because he contributed to them). Robert's a big fan of what Sun offers for Java. Chuck's still skeptical that anyone else has gotten it right—but knows we will.
What do you like? Tell us here.
I like the openness and
I like the openness and accessibility of the LPI exams. They're affordable, the skill level system is easy to understand and it's very clear what you need to master for each level.
The fact that they're present on almost every FLOSS oriented conference makes them easy to reach and makes the barrier to entry significantly lower.
Whatever the certification turns out to mean, it should be very clear what's needed to pass, from a student's perspective (what to learn?), from a general manager's (what's he business value?) and from a technical manager's (what's the technical value).
In terms of certification expiration date, I guess that's not really an issue. If Drupal continues to release a major version each year, having certification tied to a major version is clear enough in itself. It's easy enough to figure out the relative value of a certifiction for version 6 when 9 is coming out of beta...
Ooh, and a trainers' certificate would be nice too.
I'm also a fan of the LPI
I'm also a fan of the LPI concepts, but RHCE does a better job of determining if you can take the knowledge the paper tests demonstrates and can actually work towards troubleshooting. I don't expect a Drupal cert would be about troubleshooting, but knowing which tools to use in which situations could be demonstrated.
Community participation and
Community participation and product evangelists substantiate the value of a certification program. A community of developers with a passion for the tools and willingness to contribute can raise training and certification programs to new standards of achievement when given ways to be involved.
I saw the founding of Allaire’s certification program quickly travel to recognized achievement in a very short time. The program was then rolled over to Macromedia which fully adopted and merged its practice of community involvement in building and improving the exams.
The best certification exams are written, edited and reviewed by experts in the certified job areas. The measurement instruments (tests) are engineered to maximize decision consistency in determining masters and nonmasters. The exams are designed to cover the most important aspects of performing the job that represents and defines success. As Jay says, “New developers who stumble could give Drupal a black eye.” The certification program’s goal should be a certified person will do the work right the first time and eliminate rework.
Given Drupal and the growing community, the Acquia team is well on its way to achieve their goals.
I know I'm late to the
I know I'm late to the party, but...
I disagree with this. Market need for certified consultants and developers substantiates the value of a certification program. :)
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Tom Geller * San Francisco
http://www.tomgeller.com * http://www.gellerguides * http://www.savemyhomebook.com
(I commented the below on an
(I commented the below on an earlier post, but the post itself has disappeared entirely? I apologize that this isn't exactly what is asked for here, but a perspective without any experience with a certification program is also important. And I have one good suggestion: bake community participation/contribution into the certification program.)
Read every post on this amazingly long thread on the Drupal consultants list three months ago:
http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/2007-December/002224.html
(and if you have already, probably do so again)
Especially
Eric Goldhagen:
http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/2007-December/002232.html
Roshan Shah:
http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/2007-December/002246.html
Chris Johnson:
http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/2007-December/002248.html
Greg Knaddison
http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/2007-December/002261.html
Ashraf Amayreh / Bill Fitzgerald:
http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/2007-December/002267.html
What you want to avoid is any possibility that there's a perception that the certification is a virtual shakedown to prove skills one already has by handing money over. No matter how good you try to make the training aspect, the specter of "the" certification as something new developers feel compelled to pay for could cause resentment among many... unless contributing back to the community – what so many say should be the true certification – is truly built into the process.
If developers get certification and training and Acquia gets money, just be careful it doesn't look at all like a monopoly like Microsoft's certification, or a keep-developer-rates-up tool like the Bar Association is for lawyers.
However, if in addition core gets patches (or high-profile contrib gets patches), by (aspiring) professionals, mentored by the best in the business? If that's part of the certification process, it would shut me up in a hurry, in fact it would make me sign up. This would be more expensive but well worth the money in getting truly complete and proven Drupal experience.
Even for administrators, part of Acquia's certification should be the completion of, say, three DROP tasks.
Some of my best friends are
Some of my best friends are lawyers! :-P (And some of our clients as well.)
It was a stupid statement that undercut my argument.
Still (and this is much broader than certification) I hope we do everything we can to avoid the aspects of professionalization – high initiation costs, impenetrable jargon, various exclusion techniques – that serve short-term financial self-interest over the public interest, and that tend to creep into many attempts at professionalization.
Thanks for the thoughtful
Thanks for the thoughtful post. I'm not sure what happened to your original comments on this, but thanks for reposting here.
Regarding the consulting thread, I think it's important to make clear that certification should only be one of many factors in considering someone for a job. There are a lot of attributes that are hard to capture in a multiple choice test. But technical competency does matter, and a well-designed certification exam can reliably identify it.
Your suggestion about adding a community participation element to the certification is intriguing. I heard the same thing from several community leaders at Drupalcon. Let's continue to think about ways of including this aspect in a scalable and fair manner.
I think we also need to come up with a more powerful way of describing the direct linkage between professional competency as a developer/administrator/themer and contribution to the project. Is it both a necessary and a sufficient condition? Is is necessary but not sufficient? Is is sufficient, but not necessary? I think we need more precision in order to make the case. Help me out here.
Regarding the cost of certification, you can rest assured that we're not out to make fat profits on this. We're a software company. There are hard dollar development and operating costs we'll have to recover, but it will largely be a pass through business for us. Our primary goal here is to dramatically grow the number of verifiable competent Drupal professionals in the marketplace. If cost is in any way a barrier, we'll be mercilessly hammering it down.
I can only agree with the
I can only agree with the first comment of jpoesen - the LPI programs are great, an easy to understand learning path, affordable and clear standards. the online resources are excellent - IBM basically provides on its pages all you need to get started and it will spread the word easily. It will standardize the skill level assessment and give a good reference of what certified developers are capable of.
This approach would also make sure that developers from less affluent places wouldn´t be cut off the certification track because they can´t afford to foot a several thousand dollar bill in fees and learning materials. . . the most of asia, parts of eastern europe [all with vivid drupal communities] and most other places except western europe and north america comes to mind . .
Interested in training...
Interested in training... And a quick disclaimer in that I am entirely new to Drupal at this point. But in a previous life as an IT trainer, and someone who likes to scale up quickly on new technologies, I tend to like 4-5 day courses that approximate a pseudo-bootcamp experience. In other words, 2-3 days of survey content, with 2 more days of hands on case studies. In the case of Drupal, I would imagine a build out of various site types and API access templates, but again just guessing on the training content side. Meanwhile in terms of certification, LPI is good but a lack of perceived rigor and consistency has hurt the cert. And I know that when I used to train people in LPI material it was all over the place in terms of content standards (probably unavoidable due to rapid changes in technology.) But a better model is scaling a cert into 2 solid tiers like the successful certs such as Cisco (CCNA, CCIE) Microsoft (MCP, MCSE), and RedHat (RHCT, RHCE). In any case, would like to participate if you guys run a training program. Drupal looks great. Thanks.
This was my fear... I truly
This was my fear...
I truly think that the lack of a certification is a big weakness of Drupal and at the same time I do not want Drupal certification to be owned by one company. As you are well engaged in the implementation of "Yellow Jersey", as you are the first do do it and as you have the expertise I fear that you will end up with a kind of monopolistic position on Drupal training.
There is no reason that a certification program may be owned by someone. The idea that I had in mind is that the certification program and exams may be managed by the Drupal association, then private companies will be able to differentiate themselves by providing excellent trainings programs.
Not only this will be a more open approach, but I think that at the end Drupal will benefit from it.
I am looking forward your project description, and I hope you will propose to help the Drupal org. implement such an open certification program...
Alex.
http://www.ineation.com
The association isn't
The association isn't currently considering such a program, but they are open to suggestions and proposals. They do not, however, have the manpower to create a certification program at the current time. This does not mean that others cannot enter the market or fill the gaps that might be left by Acquia's efforts. As I posted on groups.drupal.org:
- We are not trying to monopolize certification. We will be offering certification targeted to our own (Drupal based) product. Others can move to offer other certification programs. I expect we will most likely be the only vendor interested in offering certification for Acquia products.
- We see certification as a valuable asset for the community and are taking the opportunity to pursue it for the good of Drupal.
- We encourage a diversity of providers of Drupal education and certification, and hope to work directly with providers who are interested in working with us.
- We're looking to hear more from the community here on this site.
Thank you for coming here to post your concerns, your feedback is valued.
First of all, thanks for
First of all, thanks for accepting the discussion.
Since I've started the discussion on drupal.org my point of view has (slightly) evolved.
I have to say that it seems that you have the approval of the community (see the poll) and that they trust you. And truly, as I say in my post, I also think that certification is a real need.
Nevertheless, I still think that there is a risk of loosing clarity and adding complexity to the Drupal offering if everybody is creating different certification level. You say that your certification will be aimed at your distribution, but this is a very generic distribution (drupal+CCK+views+panels+...) so there will 90% of the scope that will be the same with other certifications.
This is why I proposed that at least certifications scope and names may be coordinated among the community. So that when I need a Drupal developer to work with me I don't have to do any research to understand his level of expertise...
Thanks for listening,
Alex.
Yeah! Totally agree with
Yeah!
Totally agree with you. I don't see any reason why companies like Lullabot or Openkick or others can't offer their own version of Drupal certifications.
It eventually boils down to $$$ and expert labor available to prepare the programs.
Acquia probably would be the first to come out with certification and which is great.
Bhushan
This semester we have our
This semester we have our second Drupal introduction course here at the University in Szeged. So far the different items in the course have been focusing on teaching people the basic concepts (the Drupal way of doing things) and showing them where to find more information when they need it. For this semester 70 students signed up (this means that about 40 will actually do the course).
Last semester students earned their credits with a not for profit project, this way we avoided the need for setting up a knowledge verification framework while mimicking the jazzy community way of doing things. This semester we are experimenting with DROP tasks as means for getting students involved/experienced.
I'm happy to collaborate on a curriculum/course material and I would love to built next semester's classes on a standardized framework. However I don't really see the university or the students paying for this (I'm giving these classes as a volunteer).
What are your thoughts on pricing for the training/certification? Is there a possibility that we could work out the course material under GPL. That way I could use it for my courses. You could then provide the certification as a service for those students that want to pay to get certified.
Drupal training syllabus
Drupal training syllabus
In the spirit of open source, I started sharing Linnovate's Drupal training syllabuses on groups.drupal.org. Currently only the initiation course syllabuses is there. Two more will be added shortly.
I invite everyone to join the development of these syllabuses and add materials to them!
======================
Z.Stolar
linnovate.net - community content infrastructures
Children illustration
Speaking purely from
Speaking purely from standpoint of someone who participated in various certification programs, some technical and most management/consulting oriented. And also from standpoint of a Drupal "customer" rather than a developer/contributor.
I think having two separate tracts - one technical and one consulting, has been suggested by others, but I think it is important to emphasize the point that consulting should be a separate track. In my experience, I have come across too many providers who claim gazillion years of experience in a platform (including Drupal) and equal amount of projects, but who prove completely incapable of consulting - what modules, extensions, themes, views, etc - are best used in a particular project, how to deal with issues of scalability, administration, back-ups, infrastructure, etc. All the work that needs to be done and addressed before the developers start cranking away.
One company I particularly respected for the way they administered their exams and certifications programs was SANS, especially now that they changed their format a bit. You have to pass the multiple choice exams, and write a paper on the topic, that is then graded by a panel and determines final certification. I think this approach will really prove to potential Drupal clients that the individual does posses the consulting skills and knowledge to initiate a project. This suggestion is only for the consulting/management track. I am sure others will have better ideas for technical certifications.
Just my two cents,
Vadim
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True Citizen Journalism Site - www.neaju.com
We're seriously interested
We're seriously interested in training. The only other training provider we've found is way too expensive for our medium sized firm.
I would pay to have access
I would pay to have access to support from Yellow Jersey - certified Drupal experts so I can get my projects done fast.
I would also like Yellow Jersey Certification for myself.
That is a really great
That is a really great Improvement for the Drupal community. Wish you all a great success and hope that soon or later a lot of Yellow jersey Centers will spread all over the World. If possible soon in Austria(Vienna) that's where I live. Just as info, if you need a rapresentative in Austria I will appreciate! ;-)
I wonder if taking a look at
I wonder if taking a look at how the Java certifications are structured helps. As someone who passed the certifications, they were immensely useful if you used them as a tool to assess and improve your coverage of the domain.
Sadly there was/is an abundance of cram guides that allow you to memorize the material in a rote fashion and pass the exams.
The blog link returns a 404
The blog link returns a 404 Page Not Found.
Now fixed. Thanks.
Now fixed. Thanks.
Any updates on if/when you
Any updates on if/when you will begin offering cert training?
I think Certification is an
I think Certification is an excellent idea. However it need the "authority" of the Drupal community - and I dont know how hard that is to get.
My company staff go through Zend Certification training - and it helps us get PHP based projects. Zend Certification for PHP is a de facto standard for PHP - Drupal Certification needs to have the same kudos - in other words not just a company's commercial training offering, but training to a recognised standard.
The quality of traning is important too. With an international audience I gusee you would have to do "live" but online training. This is the way Zend works.
You have appointed time dates and places and effectively have a live, but remote, online classroom.
Hope this is useful
Not often I reply to my own
Not often I reply to my own comments but Ive been thinking about this.
Trying to get something set as a standard is just hard work. I pity anyone in Acquia trying to get some kind of "acceptance" from the Drupal "community" . There is simply no structure to do this.
SO I think just go straight ahead and set some training standards and create a program.
Other companies may well do the same, in which case there can be a market battle and sooner or later a consensus will emerge.
I'd LOVE for there to be a
I'd LOVE for there to be a training & certification program - just to make it easier to find the right training path for myself. I'm usually so busy doing development that I can't get my head above water long enough to evaluate all of my different options for training, and I'm hesitant to invest $2000 plus expenses and a week of billable time for week-long "workshops" before knowing that they are what I really need. I've done them (non-drupal) before and came away feeling really disappointed at the level of training provided for the amount of dough I spent.
A reputable and structured training & certification program would make this decision/investment much easier, however. So I'd definitely go for it.
I would like to see
I would like to see Drupal:
- Basics (for customers)
- Project Managers
- Developers (modules)
- Designers (themes)
- Expert (Performance, Security)
training and certification.
It's funny because I brought
It's funny because I brought this topic up in the drupal dojo IRC channel sometime back. Although I suggested having a belt ranking system (just because of the dojo) but I think this is a really good idea. I'm looking forward to seeing what this company does for drupal
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http://proxous.com
I am an aspiring
I am an aspiring designer/developer/programmer finishing a Masters Degree in Digital Media in Houston, Texas. I have been using Drupal for 3 years now, and am ready to really go to the next level with some serious training. I have the books, watched many videos on blip.tv, etc, and of course the documentation, all of which are great, but I would love to have an opportunity to refine my skills, learn from the experts, and be able to take this knowledge into the Houston, TX market. For a city that's the 4th largest in the U.S., there isn't a very big Drupal presence here, and I want to spread the word, so....please I can't wait to have some formalized training plan that can help me move from self taught Drupaler, to a more refined, certified Drupal expert. Houston is wide open in my opinion...go Yellow Jersey!