{"id":6335,"date":"2016-04-15T22:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T21:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=6335"},"modified":"2016-04-15T23:38:26","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T22:38:26","slug":"professionalism-at-last-chartered-it-professional-citp-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2016\/04\/professionalism-at-last-chartered-it-professional-citp-status.htm","title":{"rendered":"Professionalism at last: Chartered IT Professional (CITP) status"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Wilson, BSc (Hons) MBCS CITP<\/em>. It’s got a nice ring to it. Except that I almost never use letters after my name (in fact, one of my customers complemented me a few days ago for not doing so – although I did point out to him that my email signature is auto-generated in software and so I don’t have the option!).<\/p>\n

Regardless of the above, today, I received official notification that I’m now a Chartered Information Technology Professional (CITP). This accreditation is awarded by the British Computer Society (BCS), who describe it as:<\/p>\n

“Aligned with The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), the UK Government backed competency framework, CITP is the benchmark of IT excellence.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s been a bit of a journey to achieve professional status, so I thought I’d write a quick blog post about the process, just in case that’s helpful\/useful to others.<\/p>\n

The application process<\/h3>\n

My journey started around a year ago, whilst I was still working at Fujitsu, where all Distinguished Engineers\u00a0had our BCS membership fees paid and were encouraged to apply for Chartered status. Unfortunately I had resigned by the time the invoice arrived and Fujitsu reneged on the promise to pay my CITP application fee, but I decided to\u00a0make the payment myself and continue with the process.<\/p>\n

As part of my application<\/a> (including a copy of my CV and an experience statement), I had to demonstrate that I had been working for at least 3 of the last 5 years at SFIA level 5<\/a>\u00a0(or above!). I also provided details of supporters who had known me and my work over that period. \u00a0I was reasonably confident that I work at that level – Fujitsu regraded\u00a0many of their technical staff using SFIA shortly before I left and I was judged to be at level 5 (although there was some disagreement about whether I was a domain architect or a solution architect – I’ll save that for another blog post!)<\/p>\n

Breadth of knowledge test<\/h3>\n

The next stage is\u00a0the Breadth of Knowledge (BoK) test. The BCS describe this as:<\/p>\n

“This stage involves a formal testing of core knowledge across the breadth of IT. The test comprises multiple choice questions which cover a broad range of sectors and topics.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had six months to complete this stage of the process. which is an exam undertaken at a Pearson Vue test centre. I can’t say much about the exam (it’s subject to a confidentiality agreement) except that if you truly are working at level 5 (i.e. reasonably senior roles) you probably have a broad enough experience of IT to be able to answer (or at least guess) most of the multiple-choice questions. There’s also some mock questions on the BCS website that give you a flavour of things – as well as a published syllabus<\/a> and an extensive reading list, which I’m afraid I ignored…<\/p>\n

The hardest part of the exam is that, in addition to an overall pass mark of 50 out of 75 questions, it’s necessary to score at least 8 out of 15 in each of the 5 sections. \u00a0In mock tests I was a bit close to the 8 and I couldn’t work out why. In the final exam I did OK in all areas.<\/p>\n

Skills assessment interview<\/h3>\n

With the exam out of the way, the next stage is the skills assessment<\/a> – a formal interview involving a 10-minute presentation and subsequent questioning. Again, the BCS offer guidance – and it’s worth reading it closely – the presentation shouldn’t be a rehash of your CV, or repeat other information in the application – but should:<\/p>\n

“Deliver a clear and concise presentation of professional work for which you were personally responsible and which demonstrates your competence. Your presentation should be based on an area(s) from the SFIA skills within your chosen specialism.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had six months to prepare for, book, and carry out the skills assessment, which is conducted remotely using Citrix GotoMeeting. When I finally booked my appointment, I was pleased to find that there were weekend slots available. Unfortunately\u00a0GotoMeeting wasn’t behaving for me when it came to starting the interview, but I did join early, the assessors were patient, and a reboot plus an analogue telephone line let me work around the issues…<\/p>\n

The hardest thing for me in preparing for my interview was identifying which specialism most closely aligned to my work (I do find SFIA rather arcane in that regard) and that comes through in my presentation, embedded below (although the slides have limited value without the supporting script, I’m afraid).<\/p>\n