Information Technology Reference
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experience, but, as a matter of fact, something quite inferior to either
one.” 87 His letter provides a stinging but accurate indictment of the
failure of the CDP program to achieve widespread acceptance and
legitimacy:
My experience indicates that people seek certifi cation from their professional
peer group for only two reasons. Either it is required by law or the individual
feels that the mark of acceptance stamped upon him by his peer group is suffi -
ciently important to be worthy of the extra effort to achieve that certifi cation.
Unfortunately, in the data processing profession, many, certainly most, of the
people we recognize as outstanding professional achievers and accomplishers, do
not hold the CDP. 88
One of the major criticisms leveled against the CDP examination by
employers and data processing managers was that it tested “familiarity”
rather than competence. 89 It was not clear to what skills and abilities the
CDP was actually intended to certify: “The present DPMA examination
measures breadth of data processing experience but does not measure
depth. . . . It certainly does not measure or qualify programming ability.
It makes no pretense of being any measure of management skills.” 90 The
problem was a familiar one for the industry: although most employers
in this period believed that only “competent” programmers could develop
quality software, no one agreed on what knowledge and abilities consti-
tuted that “competence.” 91 As Fred Gruenberger suggested at a RAND
symposium in 1975 on certifi cation issues, “I have the fear that someone
who has passed the certifying exams has either been certifi ed in the
wrong things (wrong to me, to be sure) or he has been tuned to pass the
diagnostics, and in either case I distrust the whole affair.” 92 His attitude
refl ects the ambivalence that many observers in this period felt about
contemporary data processing training and educational practices. If data
processing was simply a “miscellaneous collection of techniques applied
to business, technology and science,” rather than a unique discipline
requiring special knowledge and experience, then no certifi cation exam
could possibly test for the broad range of skills associated with “general
business knowledge.” “Given the choice between two people from the
same school, one of whom has the CDP, but the other appears brighter,”
Gruenberger argued, “I'll take the brighter guy.” 93
Although the DPMA revised and updated its examinations annually,
and eventually introduced a Registered Business Programmers exam
intended specifi cally for programmers, it was never able to convince the
industry of the relevance of its certifi cation programs. One data process-
ing manager suggested that the CDP was at best “a minor plus for the
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