I.T. Academy Introduces a New Certification Program for the Software Development Industry

I.T. Academy has completed preparation of Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP) courses. This professional certification is one of the most authoritative evaluations of software developers. Expansion of software engineering education throughout Russia and the CIS is the goal of this new direction.

The industry and standards of software engineering are been developing continuously. Currently, at least 150,000 people are engaged in this sphere (Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Kazakhstan). According to the forecast of the IT and Communication Ministry of RF: export volume of custom built software will be about 1.3 billion US dollars in 2007, but the required amount of developed software and business efficiency of a development company can only be achieved with high qualification of personnel. Therefore, training must meet worldwide standards for quality and content.

An acute shortage of Software Engineering (SE) training has been discussed for a long time in open sources. Universities do not educate qualified software engineers; short-term training courses, as known, do not provide system education. Only large companies can afford specialized internal education.

The CSDP founder is the worldwide Association of Professionals of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Computer Society (http://computer.org), with about 100,000 members. The main CSDP characteristics are as follows:

• Deep knowledge of software engineering according to Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK)
• Software development experience
• Continuous advancement of professional education according to SWEBOK

Annually, the list of CSDP certified professionals is published in magazines IEEE Software and IEEE Computer. Advantages of having certification are:

• Understanding of all knowledge and development aspects of software
• Access to professional information and communication with developers communities
• Official acknowledgement of a higher professional level of software development

I.T. Academy has been educating software engineers for 11 years, since it was founded. The range of courses designed for the training of software engineers is increasing year by year and now the product portfolio of I.T. Academy includes authorized courses and programs of suppliers such as IBM (Rational, Lotus), Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems (Java), Borland and XML Academy, as well as Java technologies courses.

To provide complex service of SE training, it was decided to develop a new modular program intended for the company management or development department management, project managers, analysts, designers, programmers, testing specialists and managers responsible for software development quality.

I.T. Academy offers 11 courses for 11 fields of knowledge - standard IEEE Computer Society courses – for preparation of the test for CSDP Certification.

• Business Practices and Engineering Economics
• Software Requirements
• Software Design
• Software Construction
• Software Testing
• Software Maintenance
• Software Configuration Management
• Software Engineering Management
• Software Engineering Process
• Software Engineering Tools and Methods
• Software Quality

All courses information is in Russian, including: slides of lectures, development models description, standards, and manuals for practical tasks. Teachers from I.T. Academy and Russia's leading Universities conduct the courses.

Students are being training purposefully for the Thomson Prometric certified exam. Total lenght of the program is108 academic hours, but individual course are available at separate rates.

All things being equal, it is a strong advantage for IT engineers to have certificates and diplomas of this program for evaluate during the hiring process.