I’m a business owner and we use Yii for our development.
Currently there is a situation when some of my developers are working with Yii for more than a year, others - a few months. But this does not mean that the first ones know it better that the newbies. I think, it is evident for everyone here that knowledge is not always proportional to the experience. It is more about your attitude and learning.
So I am thinking of introducing some kind of certification that allows me to evaluate the knowledge of each developer and see his weak and strong areas and define the way for his improvement.
Is there any existing effort in this field? Does anyone else besides me need it? If so, any ideas, how this should be done?
I have a kind of a checklist for topics I would like to check, but I’d like to build some kind of global database where anyone could add questions, they could be moderated, approved and then tests are automatically created.
My main interest is to evaluate my employees’ knowledge and understand better their weak areas. The approach taken for Yii can be applied to other areas. I think, the keys for any certification or in-house evaluation are high-quality questions and excellent framework for evaluation.
If I implement it only for my company, I’d rather go with open questions because it is really hard to make a good set of questions and variants in a reasonable timeframe. However if Yii community will be involved, the test-based approach may be possible.
I’ll read the ruby story. But as a business onwner (and the one who passes zend certification) I cannot understand what is wrong when someone offers certification… I offer my developers to pass zend certification because I know they will learn some new things and make their knowledge of PHP more consistent. For the same reason I am willing to introduce something like this for Yii.
By the way, I also want to see the same for ExtJS, jQuery, Javascript and OOP. However, that’s just dreams for now
Zend Certification takes place in a dedicated place (usually it’s local university building) where you can’t cheat using a pocket reference or googling. How do you want to address this issue with online certification?
Anyway, I like your idea and will support it. Are you planning to opensource application itself hosting it, for example, at GitHub? Do you think it should be a separate website/project or it can be integrated into yiiframework.com so at pages like http://www.yiiframework.com/user/415/ there will be "certified" badge for ones passed?
A comment on the above: I worked at Zend and I am a Zend certified Eng.
Zend certification occurs, at least in Israel, in some private computer schools that live on, among their classes and courses, on certification exams. They are equipped with special software to delegate the exams to each examined person, measure times, collect answers and report results to whatever end point in Zend (I guess Zend persons in charge of education etc). Not only ZCE tests are carried out in these schools but also lots more tests/certification-exams (M$, Oracle, Cisco, etc…).
What I’m saying is that such testing services are rent-able in the right locations. Consider those before implementing your own (=reinventing the wheel…).
Some notes to samdark ( and everybody else interested )
This has to be considered wisely… if we start with certifications… we have to work on it constantly :
make new questions so that they are not always the same
update tests with every new version - sub-version of Yii
where would the certification happen - if on yiifraemwork.com - we need to work on this too
As for the certified logo… if this will be implemented… the certificate should be displayed on the yiiframework site, but the certified user should be able to link the certification wherever he needs (like zend certified users has in forum signatures)… and the certification should be given for a Yii version… as it’s not the same if someone has knowlede from Yii 1.1.0 or Yii 1.1.8… as there are many, many differences and new possibilities in the latest version comparing to the first one…
I think that while it sounds nice, rolling out certification demands resources that usually only established funded companies have.
If your interest is promoting Yii, then I’m not sure that certification in the best (or a good) way to go. It demands a lot, as mdomba noted above.
Certification serves the purpose, among the rest, of alleviating the ‘enterprise acceptance’ level when enterprise decision makers have a tool with which they can scan candidate to works in their company, and also it does make a good impression - knowing that X has certification exams - ‘I guess its a well established project’, etc… . It helps in putting greater order into the arena of the system at hand (PHP, Yii, etc)
Right. Well, at least, I think, we can assist KJedi with questions and, if it we’ll not be able to make it a “real” certification, we can always name it “Yii quiz”.
KJedi can take any post in the forum… that has been solved… so he can give the initial problem to the developers to see if they will solve it…
As for the Yii Quiz… I think it’s a good idea as this way developers would test their Yii knowledge… and would see what they still need to learn about…
I think it’s a good idea, as long as it serves as a check list for the developer himself(herself).
But I doubt the efficiency of the "certification exam" as a business tool for evaluating developers and/or managing development teams.
IMO it’s communication that gives you the right decision in an organization.
Read some codes and have some talk, then you will know what he knows and what he doesn’t, and, at the same time, he will know what you know and what you don’t. It’s not a one way process of you evaluating him. It’s understanding each other. By doing so, as we do in this forum, we can easily and comfortably decide and accept which person should take leadership in which area. This is the sound basis for the development team where the practical authority should dominate the project instead of the formal titles.
I know there’s something different to be considered in business, but all the effective organizations need communication.
Sorry, there are too many things to answer, so I will do it for everyone in this post.
I have some kind of checklist now, but it should be expanded further. I am about to develop the approach for this and going to share it with the community.
For myself I was considering open-ended questions. User answers the questions in the free form and this response should be reviewed by 3 persons. Each of them do it independently and just mark the replies as "correct", "incorrect", "not sure". If their opinions do not match, then these replies are reviewed by me. When we get results, we evaluate the scores and understand the weak and strong areas of a person.
Regarding the implementation, I was thinking about the standalone website where everyone who is registered can propose questions. These questions should be checked by the group of users who have really good level (e.g. we can take top 20-30 users from this forum). Logos, ratings, questions and other staff can be shared by everyone via API.
Each question should have settings that define it’s relevance to the Yii versions. So when someone decides to take exam, we show him only the questions which are relevant to every version
Yes, supporting the certification (or quiz) is an essential effort. However for me it will be worth it (if I have to support open-ended questions)
Regarding the open source - I am thinking now about GPL or closed source because I have some plans for starting SaaS on the same platform, but for different area.
Yes, communication matters. However in order to get prepared for such communication I need almost the same set of questions. Otherwise I will not get correct result. Communication matters, but if I say “You don’t really understand the Registry pattern role in Yii” it does not sound really persuading. However if I ask several questions about this and can show his errors, it is much better for the communication productivity. But for this you need to be prepared.
I think that discussing the quiz results is much better than just talking.
It is also easier to answer questions "Why Bill gets $200 more than me?"
I don’t think this certification will be as recognized as Zend’s. Sure, not. But it gives you some more information about prospective employee. And if you’re doing this with your own employees, you can watch them yourself, it is easy.
