The notion of a form of accreditation for web designers and developers came up in a recent thread. The clear advantage of such a scheme is that prospective clients would have some idea as to the competency of the businesses they are looking at hiring.

 

However is it a practical proposition?

 

My own background is in Mechanical/Electrical engineering and Operations Management (Sounds impressive, but trust me the pay is garbage. ). In that sphere we have parameters defined by legislation within which we have operate. We may join a relevant engineering institution which according to our academic and level of practical and management achievement we are awarded a designation. In much the same way over the last 30 years those working in gas fitting and electrical work now need to be GasSafe and/or NICEIC approved to carry out this work.

 

Whilst the above are not totally foolproof they do at least provide some sort of indication as to competency to carry out the work in hand through a process of education, training and testing. However this process is the result of years of experience we now have in these fields through empirical testing and analysing failures. The materials and components used are manufactured to known and set standards and regulations and therefore much uncertainty is removed from the equation.

 

However is web design and development actually in a state for such measures to be applied?

 

The web is still pretty much in a constant state of development. The W3C exists and provides a set of guidelines within which we should work. However it is a pretty toothless affair and the way in which it was caught with its pants down when the mobile explosion arrived shows that it doesn't seem to keep its eye that firmly on the ball. They offer the validation service but that isn't obligatory and indeed most sites that function perfectly well would fail validation. So are the W3C the people to do this or should a separate body be set up?

 

So how would this body be set up? By its very nature and name the web is a worldwide entity so is it practical to have individual nations setting up their own schemes or would an internationally based organisation be better suited. It doesn't have to be that the client and the designer/developer are in the same country or even continent so if one country applies a lower criteria than another it all gets a little confusing.

 

Which brings us to the question of, how much state intervention should there be in this? The web was set up to be a place without barriers for the free exchange of ideas and information. Governments across the world have been eagerly chipping away at this and steadily taking more control so do we need their heavy handed involvement in this as well?

 

Then it comes to how are designers and developers going to be measured as to competency? There are now set courses available in universities and colleges for web design and development so the level of qualification could act as a marker. However what about those who started years ago and are primarily self taught, do they sit a written test or perhaps submit a portfolio for appraisal.

 

Overall it seems a fairly tough proposition at the moment. There are those who design, those who develop and freelancers who may do both. Throw into the mix the back-end developers and there is quite a panoply of disciplines to be considered.

 

The biggest stumbling block I see at the present time is the lack of a definite set of parameters within which everybody is likely to fall.

Edited January 2, 201511 yr by nfc212

We are all aware of the principles and defining elements within our own trades, these elements between different designers and developers can mostly be agreed on, others are questionable.

 

Defining the elements that make a good design or a good coding structure should not be overly difficult if looked upon and created by experience and qualified individuals who can set the guidelines. Personally I would use a route of evidence, we all know that web design and development changes very often, but so does mechanics, electronics and gas, they just re-set the standard by issuing advice on the new standard consistently.

 

The biggest issue here is that those trade bodies are for safety so if they screw up, it's serious and the results can be deadly meaning the law and trading standards enforces its powers to prevent it happening again.

 

Web design and development does not cause a danger if you screw it up, it costs businesses money, but that's all, so in order to police with a body it would need the support of businesses and trading standards together.

 

When it comes to qualified or not, if you were looking to set up such a body it would not be too much to ask for one of two things, either a formal qualification from a college or university and one or two work examples, or just a few work examples that can be looked at by the body to determine if they have the current skill set to do the job. Also to cover change, there could be a recheck of recent major skills every now and then

 

The difficult part of all this is not the idea, but the creation, as far as I am aware governments set these bodies up due to safety so in order to make it a reality you would need to convince them its a good idea.

The problem with regulating this industry is that it changes incredibly quickly. Any form of regulation adding layers of red-tape would grind things to a halt. Often practices that were pretty recently considered good practice -- such as tying classnames to the content has been proven to be less than an ideal practice for large scale web applications, yet there are still groups who disagree with this. The W3C has enough difficulty trying to regulate the browsers. Now imagine trying to regulate 10's of thousands of web developers.

 

It's difficult for a client to fully assess the abilities of a developer, which is unfortunate. Other than looking at previous work examples and speaking to their past clients there isn't a lot you can do.

 

As with all industries qualifications don't guarantee you that the person you're dealing with is actually any good. It just increases the probability a little, however a large proportion of the real top developers in this industry are self taught. Most of the formal education institutions cannot keep pace with the web industry (Again red tape, and lack of funding), which means many of these people will have to continue learning once they complete their formal studies.

Edited January 2, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith