IQCP, a means to an end - it is all about quality

May 2011 I was given an opportunity to be part of the first group of pioneers that field-tested the IQCP program. IQCP stands for Information Quality Certified Professional and is organized by IAIDQ - the International association for Information Quality and Data Quality.  To be fair; I really do not like certifications. It is said that with certification, clients can have some kind of objective measurement regarding knowledge and skill. Well, for the majority of certifications this is utterly deceiving.

That being said, why did I go for IQCP?

For one thing; IAIDQ is a not-for-profit organisation and vendor-neutral. People involved in IAIDQ are people with a passion to spread the word with regard to quality in general and Information Quality in particular. 

Second; the certification process was extremely well prepared, grounded in known research and adheres to widely accepted standards and regulations such as the ISO/IEC 17024 and the Standards for the Accreditation of Certification Programs, published by the USA National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA, 2002).

Third; I was not mainly interested in the certification as such....To put in poetic; I was interested in the journey, not the destination. The IQCP certification is based on a reference list of books and articles, carefully selected by people who know their stuff. The certification was a ‘carrot on a stick’ to me, pressuring me to actually study and invest time. The deadline was end of July 2011 - I have never in my life read so many books, but I have never in my life been so authentically interested in a subject as well. I just kept reading, because there is so much clever stuff written out there.

Fourth and maybe the most important reason; in may 2011 I also happened to follow the legendary PSL (problem solving leadership) workshop given by Jerry Weinberg, Esther Derby and Johanna Rothman. What I have learned is immense and influences me daily. The root of this workshop is - in my opinion - founded in quality principles; learning, continuous improvement, root-causes, self organizing team, people, communication, understanding the problem, understanding context and so much more. The people I met in this workshop were incredible and a huge inspiration. A lot of the attendees came from the world of context-driven testing and agile software development. Both - in my opinion - strongly rooted in quality principles. 

It somehow all got together when I was asked to participate in the first batch of people to go for IQCP.

For me; IQCP was the means to an end - I have studied amazing books (for a reference list download this pdf) go to written by people like Edwards Deming, Joseph Duran, Jerry Weinberg, Kaoru Ishikawa, Masaaki Imai, Richard Wang and so many more. My library has grown very rapidly lately and I have still so much more to read (learn). Somehow, all I have read, learned and still learning are pieces of a puzzle that fit seamlessly in my field of expertise #datamanagement #decisionsupport #datagovernance #dataquality #datavault #architecture #softwaredevelopment.

The journey never ends....

My gratitude goes to Tom Breur, IAIDQ, Jerry Weinberg, Esther Derby, Johanna Rothman, those crazy canadians ('it is what it is'), Testsidestory, Olav, Markus, Griffin and so many more.

ps. I passed the exam.....I am now an Information Quality Certified professional 

 

Comments

[Hennie de Nooijer]

Congrats. Where can you certify? Link? What books did you read for this exam?
Gr,
Hennie

[Ronald Damhof]

He Hennie,

I updated the post with some links:
- IAIDQ.org has got all the info regarding certification (just click the IQCP tab).
- For a reference list you can download a pdf (http://www.iaidq.org/iqcp/doc/iqcp-reference-list.pdf)

Regards - Ronald

[windows hosting reviews]

Excellent Info!I got goog knowledge about this posting,Really great pleasure to reading this posting.I bookmarked this.
Sounds like you had a great time with great people. That’s the way to live!Thanks for the info, too.