Archive for the 'OpenCerti' Category

Focus Groups

nirav January 12th, 2006

I was thinking about what focus groups to define for OpenCerti, and came up with the following list:

  • Core: Takes care of the overall vision and planning for the project.
  • Research: Surveys, interviews, market / technology research
  • Content: Questions for the test/s
  • Development: Exam tool, site technical development. PHP work.
  • Finance: Money matters! Funding, donations etc.
  • Legal: Non-profit entity setup, NDA’s and other agreements etc.
  • Promotion: Marketing, PR, Media coordination
  • Community: Coordination with PHP community, volunteers, creating more contributors
  • Documentation: Website text, Study Guide, Help etc.
  • Design: Graphic design, logo, website, buttons, brochure, posters etc.

Suggestions welcome!

BSD Community driven certification

nirav January 12th, 2006

BSD has a community driven certification process which inspired this OpenCerti project. They have been working on it for some time, and I think they have put in some tremendous work in.

I am currently studying the documents they have prepared and will post my learnings here soon.

It’s a hectic week, and I have not been able to do much on OpenCerti. Swati Sani has taken up to talk to employers and find out what do they expect from the certification. I think it would be great if we can do this for developers as well! Anybody with a ready survey tool?

Article about Zend Certified Engineer

nirav January 5th, 2006

Sys Con has a a very thorough article about the Zend Certified Engineer program. I learnt many good things about the ZCE there, and a few things we can consider for OpenCerti.

- One comment said it’s just a single test. So do we need multiple tests?
- Another said developers user PEAR etc too. So our test should consider them. Not just pure PHP.
- They have one word answers too. Like function names. We can incorporate this too.
- They also have multiple choices in a question. We could do this too.

Also, one thing I noticed on W3Schools was the mention of a supervisor! I think it would be great to have a supervisor with the person who is taking the test. This increases the credibility tremendously! The only question is, what about the initial few supervisors?

Looks like I am getting more ideas on this! ZCE was launched at OSCON. Can we launch OpenCerti at some upcoming conference? They also carry out paper based tests at conferences. It would be super duper to do OpenCerti paper based tests at conferences. LPI too does this!

OpenCerti Todo

nirav January 4th, 2006

Here is the list of Todo items I could think of:

Phase 1 (by 29th January 2006)

  1. Post project plan to PHP user groups – in-phpug, lug, foss.in, meetup
  2. Send the project plan to PHP community leaders & prospective project leaders
  3. List down open source tools for exam taking, student management
  4. Decide on the exam tool to use, will we require modifications to it?
  5. Finalize Project plan
  6. Generate 100 questions
  7. Basic site content
  8. Logo for the project
  9. Site design
  10. Put up the brief profiles of leaders so far on the site

Phase 2 (by 5th March 2006)

  1. Online exam system cleanup, modifications etc. Beta version ready
  2. Draft of guide book
  3. Ask for feedback on the exam system – from 15 developers / leaders
  4. Exam system ready to go live
  5. Create a press release
  6. Final 20 page guide book ready
  7. Put up the brief profiles of leaders so far on the site (at least 20)
  8. Draft of continuity plan for the project
  9. Launch OpenCerti
  10. Send notes on mailing lists
  11. Send press release to LFY, OSDN, PCQ, Mailing lists
  12. Send notes to Zend, Yahoo!, companies working in PHP

Phase 3 (by 3rd April 2006)

  1. Identify core group to run the project
  2. Update profiles of the leaders on the site (at least 50)
  3. Work out financial support plan
  4. Put up media mentions and testimonials on the site
  5. Finalize continuity plan and support systems

If you would like to take up something, do let me know!

OpenCerti Vision Document

nirav January 4th, 2006

I have written up briefly about the vision and the current plan for OpenCerti. The PDF can be viewed here. Use it to forward it to your friends, print it and put it up in your organizations!

I have also booked the www.opencerti.com domain, but am still to post this up there.

For easy read, here’s the content:

OpenCerti is about creating a community driven certification process. Trusted by developers and employers both, this certification will allow fair measurement of developers’ skills. The project will create freedom and opportunities for developers and is based on the foundation of community contribution and trust.

PHP is one of the most popular languages today, yet there is no easy way to determine your PHP skills. The existing certifications are not community driven. It is very difficult to find the right PHP talent these days, and if situation stays as it is, things will get worse. If we bring together a reliable certification process for PHP, it will not only benefit the developers and employers, but also increase the awareness and value of PHP among other developers.

The advantages of this project are:
1.Globally recognized talent measurement
2.Better quality of questions and assessment
3.Better job opportunities
4.Freedom to choose the certification, to contribute
5.Recognition

The current plan is to offer two certification levels. Developer and Expert. The Dev level will have 30 multiple choice questions, covering basics, databases, file operations, sessions, logic, OOPs and more. The time duration will be 20 minutes and the test will be free of cost.

The Expert level, will have aptitude and project management related questions in addition to technical questions. On top of it, there will be two questions where the developer has to write PHP code or a small essay. These will be evaluated by a contributor to the project. The duration for this test will be 45 minutes and it may carry some fees.

We also plan to prepare a guide book for people taking the test. This guidebook (a PDF download) will explain the kind of questions in the test and the test structure. It can also contain resources and PHP tutorials.

The scores / analysis of the test can be made available to public if the developer desires. The developers can use any mechanism to answer the questions (yes, they can refer to the PHP manual or Google!). We can weigh the score by the time taken to complete it, to arrive at a more rational score.

The project is non-profit. We need to work out how we can sustain it though. Donations and charging for the Expert certification is what we thought so far. Your ideas are welcome!

You can contribute to this project. OpenCerti is not about a person or a group of people. It is not about an organization. It is about the whole community. As a matter of fact, consider it your project! Move the project further. Here are some of the ways in which you can contribute:
1.Contribute questions, suggestions
2.Talk / Write / Blog about OpenCerti to your friends, peers, organization
3.Invite other contributors
4.Volunteer to assess the answers
5.Contribute to the documentation, design or testing
6.Take the test!

Feel free to contact us. You have already made a contribution to the cause by reading so far.

Thank you.

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