Professionalism is an attitude, not an exam

Three of the leading membership bodies in technology this week published a report that aims to encourage greater importance for achieving Chartered IT Professional (CITP) status.

The report, from the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and the BCS, urges employers to give preference to suitably qualified staff, and says that major government and industry IT projects should be led by accredited professionals.

Every IT leader is likely to welcome the spirit of these proposals, but many might find it harder to deliver them in practice.

There has been debate for many years over whether it is feasible to accredit IT experts in the same way as accountants, lawyers, doctors and other such professions.

While the principles are sound –­ most people have heard and support the arguments about not building a bridge that required a service pack of bug fixes three months later ­ – there are still those who feel that a lot of IT is too holistic to approach in such a manner.

It is one thing being accredited for your technical skills in a particular area, such as Microsoft or Cisco products, quite another to have a stamp of approval that you can always successfully implement large-scale IT transformation projects.

The BCS in particular has done a lot of good work in developing the CITP qualification, and is due to announce some important improvements next month. But the debate over IT professionalism is in many ways less about qualifications than about attitude.

The IT industry has evolved with a mood that if it doesn’t work first time, it’s not a problem so long as you fix it quickly. For a long time, that was good enough, but it’s a view that cannot last for much longer.

With technology underpinning every major economy, every major government policy and increasingly most individual’s daily life, it is essential that building IT becomes as safe, secure, and predictable as building bridges. That may be difficult to achieve, but it should at least be the goal of every IT professional.