INFORMS Certified Analytics Professional Program

INFORMS The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), publishers of Analytics magazine, is launching an analytics certification program (Certified Analytics Professional or CAP) designed to "enable analytics professionals (and their employers) to have confidence that a person will bring a core set of analytics skills to a project team." Open to all qualified analysts, the first-of-its-kind certification will consist of a standardized test, as well as a review of the candidate's resume or work portfolio. The program was outlined earlier this year in the March/April issue of Analytics. Following is an update on the program, with the first exams scheduled for the 2013 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics & Operations Research in San Antonio, Texas, April 7-9, 2013, followed by a second opportunity at the 2013 INFORMS Annual Meeting, Oct. 6-9, 2013 in Minneapolis.

INFORMS has published the eligibility criteria for the CAP certification at INFORMS Online including the following:

• BA/BS or MA/MS degree in related area,
• at least five years of analytics work-related experience for BA/BS holder,
• at least three years of analytics work-related experience for MA/MS holder, and
• verification of soft skills/provision of business value by employer.

Domains Provide Top-Level Structure

The 36 typical tasks and 16 knowledge statements (not provided here) in the analytics JTA are organized in seven domains, as listed in Figure 1. Tasks are specific goal-directed work activities or groups of closely related work activities that describe identifiable behaviors, while knowledge is an organized body of information that, when applied, makes possible the competent and effective performance of the work activities described by a task.

Figure 1 also shows domain weights, which are based on the SMEs' assessments of the importance of tasks and the frequency of their performance. Mean weights of the working group members were used as starting points for discussion and debate that continued until consensus was reached. The weights will be used in the exam construction process to ensure content mixture validity. Within each of these seven domains, the JTA Working Group identified a number of tasks that must be performed by practitioners of analytics.

Successful performance of the tasks requires specific knowledge, which is what will be tested. At this time, the supporting knowledge statements are being used to develop items (questions) for the first exam and, as such, are not publicly available. We anticipate releasing them as part of the CAP Candidate Handbook and at INFORMS Online in October 2012.

Read more.