Sponsors

 

Our Vision

• Provide a free forum for the exchange of ideas concerning how business models can benefit from effective web design and development
• Promote recognition of the need for professionalism in web design, web development and web maintenance
• Develop universally accepted techniques and terminology to improve communication between customers and service providers
• Provide guidelines for career development and instruction in all web-related fields

Our objective is to establish a technology-agnostic body of knowledge, combining business planning, business modeling knowledge, and effective use of modern web technologies, and to facilitate certification based on this body of knowledge. Designing, building, and maintaining a successful business venture is no longer solely about launching a nice looking, well-designed website. True success in web management depends on the effective melding of best practices in both business and technological implementation.

Customers and vendors of web design and development will use professional certification to identify service providers who show their commitment to their craft. Certified web professionals will be acknowledged and identified as having capabilities beyond the hobbyist or journeyperson. The growth of the web professional certification will initially gain ground in North American markets but spread quickly to Europe and emerging markets with ever increasing numbers of web professionals such as India and China.

Established certification programs:

• Are managed by a sustainable not-for-profit-organization that establishes a reference curriculum (i.e., a Body of Knowledge)
• Create and maintain a testing and continuing education platform that evaluates knowledge levels and sets a threshold of knowledge necessary to obtain and keep certification
• Establish and test individuals against a code of ethics and professional conduct adhered to by all members
• Steward an accurate register of certified professionals that can validate claims of certification
• Are agnostic for a certain type of industry, technology, or methodology or is extremely specific to an industry (e.g., accounting) or technology (e.g., Cisco, RedHat or Microsoft)
• Establish and encourage a healthy community that involves certified individuals and organizations as well as for-profit and not-for-profit institutions who can benefit from training individuals who wish to become certified or wish to continue their certification through continuing education
• Encourage marketplace endorsement of the certification by:
  • establishing an inherent value for the certification by commissioning and publishing research
  • publishing relevant job descriptions
  • being actively involved in the practice of setting world-wide acknowledged standards
  • enabling for-profit training organizations and publishers to benefit from the certification ecosystem.

Rationale

To date, web professionals have been unable to establish or maintain a well-known certification

Possible reasons for this situation include:

• the perception of lesser knowledge and educational requirements than other professions (i.e., medicine, law, project management, accounting)
• the low barrier to entry to becoming a web developer or web designer
• a fairly low number of web professional roles or jobs in existence
• the easy accessibility for anyone to purchase a domain name, learn basic tools, and use a hosted website design system to launch a website. In other words, launching a website does not require a large investment in equipment, an office, staff, or learning
• the availability of “do it yourself” design template or theme systems or e-commerce solutions, avoiding the need for graphic design and/or programming skills
• the fractured web professional space includes hundreds of rapidly evolving technologies from content management systems (CMS), to web coding standards, to infrastructure, and coding languages
• the fact that business skills are taught separately from technical skills and are often brought together by happenstance during the website or system implementation process

Statistics:

• Web developer, web administrator and search engine strategist as well as  other titles have been established by the US Department of Labor.
• As of 2016, there are almost 163,000 web developer jobs in the US with a 15% growth rate.
• The median salary (2017) is US$67,900 per year.
• According to a 2014 IDC study, there are over 11M professional developers in the world, with almost 4M in the US.
• A conservative figure of 20% of all developers being web developers in the world would lead to about 2.2M web developers and designers in the world.
• By comparison, over 5M project management roles exist in the United States in 2010.

Benefits

Individual benefits

• A structured process to learn new skills and demonstrate proficiency
• Personal and professional accomplishment
• Career investment and enhancement, including a basis for establishing goals
• Recognition as having met industry standards
• Validation of individual experience of developers/designers
• Increased earning potential for developers/designers/companies
• Identification of volunteers as contributors to the body of knowledge

Organizational/business benefits

• Demonstration of employee proficiency via third-party validation
• Investment in employees and quality of work product
• Sharing of knowledge in the workplace
• Means to evaluate candidate employees
• Objective indicator of staff quality/excellence
• Validation of company experience

Development community benefits

• Enable customers to make a more informed, non-biased decision with the help of outside validation
• Create a body of knowledge acknowledged as a standard
• Enable training companies to differentiate themselves as an accredited training company

Benefits to stakeholders

• Recommendations for and creation of content represent the experiences of those performing the job
• Centralized support for activities and efforts to raise awareness of the need
• Centralized process support for ongoing development and improvement
• Opportunities to present new ideas
• Opportunities to improve visibility of issues/needs/other

Roles

• Core Team: Define and coordinate efforts, Enlist more volunteers and participants
• Experienced developers and designers: tbd
• Aspirational developers and designers who wish to “move up”: tbd
• Subject Matter Experts: Create new content, Review/edit/contribute to draft content created by others, Contribute to categorization and organization of content
• Businesses/Organizations who wish to hire experienced developers and designers as employees or contractors: Share sample WMPBOK content at meetings, on websites, in newsletters for related organizations, in discussion forums and other community activities
• Development and design companies who wish to be known as “certified”: Share sample WMPBOK content at meetings, on websites, in newsletters for related organizations, in discussion forums and other community activities
• Training companies: Raise awareness of content in the WMPBOK
• WMI members: Share sample WMPBOK content at meetings, on websites, in newsletters for related organizations, in discussion forums and other community activities
• Sponsors & Funders: Nurture investment and/or funding opportunities to fruition
• Owners/founders of leading development platforms: Raise awareness of content in the WMPBOK

Management/Volunteer Team

• Current Core Team: Alex Sirota (newpathconsulting.com) – project lead and business model lead, Lisa Stambaugh (collectivediscovery.com) – content management, not-for-profit management and writing (grant/curriculum)
• North America
• Europe/Africa/Middle East
• Asia/Australia

Potential Funding Partners

• Must align business interests to various parts of the WMPBoK
• Have a national or international reach

Anticipated Costs

• Salaries for key staff
• Creation and maintenance of body of knowledge
• Marketing efforts
• Body of Knowledge volunteer per diem
• Ambassador costs

Potential Revenue Streams

• Certification/testing revenue
• Membership revenue
• Grants from organizations such as PMI
• Accrediting other training providers to deliver certification training
• Venture capital