[consulting] Drupal Certification and Requirements

paola.dimaio at gmail.com paola.dimaio at gmail.com
Fri Dec 21 11:39:00 UTC 2007


HI Victor
very quickly scanned thorough your mail
You make some good points

I am not sure that all the premises as you 'read then' were actually intended
as the original meaning

brief comments below



> One premise I find most faulty is "Drupal is entering the corporate world,
> it must shape up to standards".
I am not sure this was a premise for this thread. More perhaps, in my reading
'drupal is more and more widely adopted, and there is an increasingly
scarcity of
drupal skills out there'

the corporate vs social world is another issue imho which I dont enter
into right now

>
>
> Another premise I find faulty here is that of the emphasis upon individual
> certification. In the real IT world, quality sites come out of collectives,
> cooperatives, studios, companies, groups working together, and following
> some kind of capability maturity model. ...> Excellence in treating us, the Drupal consultants, so as to get the best > results.

sure - I dont think that any form of documentation of skills would
contradict any of the above


>
> The third kind of premise I find faulty here is the "every time I hire
> someone they fail" variety.

I dont say that at all. It's that I have to work very hard and
exchange dozens of emails with lots of strangers and do a lot of
vetting, etc to find a suitable drupal developer, who is both
available, willing, honest, reasoably priced, capable etc etc -  and
the risk is high!  the costs of implementing a Drupal solution these
days, risks of becoming higher and higher because of skills shortage
(from my personal experience) \
Such shortage may also be only 'perceived', as there may be maybe many
great devs who never are listed on the drupal website. you must give
them a chance to come out too...
I mean when I need a drupal developer it turns like a full time job


> , we need a bloody union.

haha - why not?

and maybe also a interfaith sect

cheers

PDM


>
> So, let's beware of corporate crises and hysterical forms of organization
> overturning the carts in the bazaar, let's beware of crass individualism and
> the hiding of the group effort and the fact that one is standing on the
> shoulders of giants, and let's beware of corporate greed as a tool of
> organization, and let's beware of the need to extract surplus value from
> Drupal developers as a building block of quality and excellence.
>
> And let's beware of tinkering with something that is already working. And
> let's beware of what is demonstrably not working in the world as a whole.
>
> More than certification we need a bloody union!!!
>
> Victor Kane
> http://awebfactory.com.ar
>
>
>
> On Dec 21, 2007 7:27 AM, Liam McDermott <liam at intermedia-online.com > wrote:
> >
> > Chris Johnson wrote:
> > > Understanding how most of Drupal works and being able to use that
> > > knowledge are probably among the key things that a Drupal developer
> > > would need to know.  Can the former be mapped onto the latter in
> > >  some sort of systematic way?  Hmm.
> > Thinking about the way other practical tests work, the driving test in
> > the UK comes to mind (probably the same across the world). Examinees are
> > given a set of tasks and if they complete them without triggering any
> > failure conditions--such as breaking the speed limit, not indicating
> > when turning etc.--then they pass. Drupal could have something like the
> > following failure points:
> >
> >   * module doesn't work or doesn't implement specified functionality;
> >   * module has been copied from the Internet (cheating);
> >   * did not adhere to coding style;
> >   * used database system specific PHP function call, e.g. mysql_query();
> >   * generated UI elements without theme functions or forms API;
> >   * uploaded/manipulated files without using the file interface;
> >
> > In the driving test examinees are allowed to make a certain number of
> > minor mistakes too, example Drupal minor mistakes: minor errors in
> > coding style (like forgetting a newline before an else {), not writing
> > portable SQL, or allowing data processing into their theme functions. So
> > examinees must write a module without triggering any of the failure
> > conditions (and without making too many minor mistakes). Then the
> > examiner just uses the check list of problems to look for.
> >
> > The modules coded in tests could roughly implement the topics on this
> > page (or the important ones like FAPI, database abstraction etc.):
> > http://api.drupal.org/api/groups this could make a good start.
> >
> > Kind Regards,
> > Liam McDermott.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > consulting mailing list
> > consulting at drupal.org
> > http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
> >
>
>
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>
>



-- 
Paola Di Maio
School of IT
www.mfu.ac.th
*********************************************


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