The normal standard of care is not at an expert level of care. Rather, it is as you say - minimal qualifications. Here is an interesting hypo. You have 2 developers, one who is certified and one who is not. Both have the same skills and experience. Both work together on the same project. The project is a disaster and the client seeks relief.

Question: Does the client have a better case against the one who is certified? What does minimally qualified mean? With the guy who is not certified, there is no standard to measure him against. With the guy who is certified, there is a standard of sorts.

My point of course is that folks who really advocate certification and having the software development discipline recognized as a profession should think long and hard about it. As the old saying goes, be careful what you ask for - you might get it.

Most of the time, a client has recourse via breach of contract theory. Does the fact that a software developer is "certified" make the client's job easier in proving his/her case?

If the standard is minimally qualified, and I am a client who has a project that involves VFP and SQL - I then expect the certified person who pitches me his services to be have the minimal qualfications to get the job done. If he possesses certifications that makes those representations, my job just got easier.

Remember Jim, the minimal qualified developer delivers the app. As an analogy, a minimally qualified pilot can fly a plane. A minimally qualified heart surgeon can perform a successful bypass operation.



>Interesting question. I see a lot of folks misunderstanding the meaning of certification from the MS perspective. MS says cert says "Minimally Qualified Candidate" for a job using the product they are cert'd in. Minimally qualified is quite a distance from expert. Based on that I guess I would answer your question with No, they would not be held to a higher standard than a non-certified person. I would guess that they would be held to a standard respective of their representation of themselves prior to the engagement.