Software Engineering Licensing Exam Announced

To Software Engineering Professionals:

After years of hard work by countless software professionals across the country, the Software Engineering Principles and Practice of Engineering (PE) exam is ready for its maiden administration in April 2013. This will mark the culmination of one phase of the journey and a critical step in the overall philosophy surrounding software engineering and the licensing of software engineers in the United States.

The implementation of the exam creates a path to licensure for practicing software engineers, which helps solidify the profession as a recognized field of engineering. It may take years to thoroughly implement engineering licensure in the culture of software development, but the implementation of this exam is a huge step forward in the recognition that software engineering does directly and significantly impact public safety, health and welfare.

In anticipation of the implementation of the exam, the Software Engineering Licensure Consortium developed a guidance document to help Licensing Boards throughout the United States understand the unique aspects of the field of software engineering. That document will be ready for release by the end of 2012.

To help get the word out, I am asking that you share this information with any and all unlicensed software engineers and students in software engineering programs and encourage them to pursue licensure and take the Fundamentals of Engineering exam (while in school) and the PE exam (after acquiring engineering experience) like other engineering disciplines currently do.

Thank you for support of software engineering and the new software engineering examination.

Sincerely,
Lance Kinney, P.E.
Executive Director

Please find the NCEES Software Engineering Exam specification attached and see the links below for the announcements of the Software engineering exam.

• NCEES announcement
• IEEE announcement
• Software Engineering Exam Specifics

Success! Earned my PMP yesterday!

I set out to do well on 3 major standardized tests in 2011 and I did!  My ITIL Foundations, my PMP and… a decent GRE score.    The GRE was a risk mitigation for my changing job situation, I was accepted to TAMU Mays Business School, MIS Program, but switched jobs so Grad School wasn’t needed.  However, I wish I could find the time to do the MIS program, it’s really solid (I hire students from the program every semester).

ITIL Certification Training

I just completed QuickCert’s ITIL v3 Foundations Training Course. It included about 25 hrs of video instruction, a book, and online testing tools with a certification simulator.

Overall, I have to say that I’m not too impressed. The video presentation was incomplete and the presenter went off on tangents every hour or so. He was trying to make a point, but alas would “push” onto the “stack” two, three or even four segways before returning to the ITIL point he was trying to make.

The video was lacking in charts, and I would have appreciated getting soft copies of the three to five key illustrations in addition to the book.

The book, an “official” ITIL publication, was ok to read and study.

When I started the online assessments, I found my knowledge had holes, due in some part to the QuickCert materials. I then accessed IEEE’s material’s (provided by Element-K) and some general web content, to fill in the holes. I then was able to work through the assessments and make a 91% on the certification simulator.

With that I went to take the exam for real. The bottom line was I made a 90% but let me tell you, if I hadn’t been working with v2 of ITIL for about eight years, I would NOT have made that score.

Of the questions asked, 50% were similar to the QuickCert, 25% were similar to the Element-K (or other materials) and 25% where from the bowels of the official books (which I do NOT have).

Thus, if you don’t have a lot of experience with ITIL, you may need to use more online resources and/or buy the official ITIL books. Using just QuickCert probably won’t cut it unless you have LOTS of experience.

I tried to share this feedback with QuickCert but they have yet to respond to my email nor a phone message.

They don’t offer PMP training, which is fine, I have this expectation that the vendor should seek feedback. This could be naive on my part.