MIET

I'm now officially a Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) after an application process with rather a lot of unexpected to-ing and fro-ing from communications between my sponsor and the IET getting lost. So, I now have another group of letters to put after my name.

The biggest difference between the British Computer Society (BCS) and the IET is in their publications. The IET website and members journal (E&T) are a lot more engaging than the BCS website and its members journal (ITNow) - though ITNow has featured some passionate engagement recently (but I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive). E&T features engaging articles that go into depth, whilst ITNow articles often appear to be lightweight puffs for products and services by their authors. Also, at around 70,000 members, the BCS can only manage to produce a journal with a handfull of pages, whilst the IET with 150,000 members produces a monthly journal with much more than twice as many pages.

Whilst at university I had the choice between the BCS and the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) (who would later merge to form the IET). At that time I considered myself very much to be a computer scientist, not an electrical engineer.

After graduating (a few times) I saw no value in being a BCS member so I resigned.

After a few years I began to see myself as a software engineer, and that what I was doing was engineering. Since the BCS was a member of the Engineering Council I rejoined the BCS and eventually attained Chartered Engineer status. Unfortunately, I see less and less evidence of engineering in the BCS, whilst the IET certainly maintains its engineering face.

Would you Employ only a Certified Software Engineer?

I posted the following in a group on LinkedIn after a question in the group asking what the focus of the BCS should be in 2010:

Would you employ an amateur, DIY bricklayer to build your wall?
Would you employ someone who's read a couple of accountancy books to be your accountant?

Chances are you answer is "no".

Would you employ an amateur hobbyist coder?

Chances are, the answer is "yes".

Would you build a brick wall for yourself, or would you help do the books for your club?

Chances are, the answer is "yes"

Computer programming (and that's my background) is an area where everybody feels that they can do a bit of DIY bricklaying - especially with some scripts and a spreadsheet which then becomes a business-critical application.

Professional accreditation is all well and good, but there is no difference (from employers' perspectives) between a hobbyist coder and a CITP-holder.

Other professions (law, accountancy, medicine) require their professionals to have some professional training as well as their basic qualifications. It's also difficult to be an un-registered lawyer, accountant, doctor, etc. So there is a consequence for not being professionally recognised.

Maybe we need a new CSE for the 21st century, a Certified Software Engineer. The holder of such a certification would have to demonstrate good software engineering skills: requirements elicitation, requirements modelling, solution design, coding standards, testing, source control, documentation, maintenance, etc.

Officially an Engineer

With all the paperwork completed, I am now officially a Chartered Engineer.

So the letters CEng now get added after my name, which means my CV gets updated again, just like when I acquired the post-nominals CITP.

This doesn't mean that I can now go around saying that I can build roads and bridges - in fact it means that one of my professional duties is to not say that I can do things which I am not qualified to do. What it does mean is that I am recognised by my peers as a professional engineer who applies engineering discipline to the practice of software engineering.

Now a Professional

I'm now a Chartered IT Professional, so I can now add the letters CITP after my name.

Despite this latest award I've not quite achieved my ambition of having more letters after my name than in my name. But if I include the spaces then I have equalled the length of my name.

Upon receiving the news I thought, "Great! How do I update my CV now?"

OK, so I put CITP after my name, but I now need a new section for awards as it does not really sit well in the Certification section, which is more geared towards course-based material. After all, that's the whole point of acquiring these qualifications, isn't it?

The BCS says that as a Chartered IT Professional you should gain more credibility with employers and a competitive edge over your peers, helping you to advance your career more effectively. BCS campaigns with employers to recognise CITP status as the benchmark for highly skilled and committed IT professionals.

Whilst that is a noble goal, I fail to see it happening at the moment. On the one hand, not many organisations will have heard of the British Computer Society. On the other hand, of those that have heard of the BCS, only a few will have heard of Chartered IT Professionals.

So why did I seek out this extra award?

Well, I believe that professionalism in IT is all too often lacking, and that we need to put the "engineering" into Software Engineering.

If Civil Engineering was like Software Engineering we would have bridges built late, over budget and not meeting the customer requirements. They would also collapse frequently, need upgrading regularly, and would often be closed for servicing. And that is just for the few that would actually get built.

Would you hire an unqualified lawyer? Doctor? Accountant?

Then why do people hire self-made/amateur IT staff with no professional qualifications?

Would you hire a bricklayer who's only building experience is some DIY at home? Then why hire IT staff whose only experience is a bit of scripting and coding at home? (Having done plenty of DIY bricklaying myself, which I find quite satisfying, I would still rather hire a professional bricklayer for anything but the most basic job.)

For the last few years I have been very much quality focused, pushing for the adoption of:

• coding standards
• SQL standards
• design patterns
• test-driven development
• continuous integration
• peer-review
• well-defined processes

The sad thing is that in each team I work with I have to establish these (what seem to me) basic practices.

Each team I've worked in I've said that anyone other than a tester is an amateur tester, and all too often I have not had professional testers to draw on.

Or maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way, and that it's really a matter of Gentlemen and Players? Whilst the notion of the gentleman athlete is romantic, it is exceedingly out-dated, and has long been surpassed by the professional player.