[ale] Certification, etc. (was Re: [ale] bout me company)

[Jeff Hubbs]

3C6CECAF.AD5FA7E4 at earthlink.net">
  So ley me get this straight... I give them several thousanddollars, and as long as I *physically show up* for the class,I get the certificate? How totally 1990's! We should just skipthe "me showing up for the class" part and they can mailme the MCSE cert.
  
  
Joe -
  
Ya gotta ask them and not me; I just read their ad (CED Solutions)! 
  
This is the same sort of thing that makes me leery of claimed SEI-CMM levels
(3, 4, 5, etc.) - the assessments are usually performed by personnel from
the org being assessed plus consultants paid by the org. Â If the consultants
call for too much effort, they're not going to be retained for very long,
so the undertaking is kind of self-softening. Â I did some research into the
levels and observed one org claiming "Level 5" that actually executed projects
somewhere between Levels -1 and 1 (my research came across serious descriptions
of "negative" levels for the kind of project management acumen typically
attributable to Moe, Larry, and Curly). Â 
  
It also turns out that all you really have to do to score these "levels"
is to create some paper process; whether the process is actually adhered
to, instituted, or even published is apparently of little consequence. Â The
one that I saw didn't even make a whole lot of grammatical sense in lots
of places. Â The stack of paper can be pretty thick, at least. Â You can weigh
it in your hand and think, hey, this feels professional...
  
Extreme Programming (for those of you who haven't encountered the concept)
recognizes such weighty procedural documents as the silliness that they are
and seeks instead to imbue a project team with a "lightweight" methodology
whose fundamentals can be conveyed without Powerpoint slides in a fifteen-minute
discussion. Â Primarily, it's a way to prevent all the craziness that befalls
meticulously-Gantt-charted projects and vexes their participants to no end
time and time again. Â Extreme Programming is so lightweight that it's about
as reasonable to hire consultants to train your people in it as it is to
hire consultants to train you how to dress yourself. Â 
  
- Jeff
  
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