Why it is important to certify your developers
Like many digital agencies, 3chillies makes the effort to ensure our developers are certified so they have the right skills and level of proficiency to work with particular technologies and meet required standards. By ensuring our developers are certified it means we are a:
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Sitecore certified Gold Partner
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Umbraco certified Gold Partner
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Microsoft certified Gold and Silver Partner across different aspects of development and deployment.
Being a Gold Partner requires us to ensure a number of our developers have acquired the requisite knowledge and experience to pass a variety of different exams, and also sometimes to ensure that this is put to use by staying involved with particular projects. Certification can involve particular specialisms or aspects of working with a product, depending on your role; this is reflected in different exams you can take.
For us certification is never a “tick box” exercise; in fact, it’s a real achievement. It’s also something that is very important to us as an agency and to our staff.
In this post, we’re going to explore eight of the reasons why we think it is important to certify your developers.
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Critical for credibility
As a digital agency that focuses on software development and other aspects of technology, the quality of our coding, output and advice is essential. We continue to have to provide confidence to clients and prospects by proving our credibility.
The certification of our developers is an essential component of establishing that credibility, and in many cases will be a prerequisite and requirement for being engaged to carry out a piece of work. Without certification relating to Microsoft, Umbraco and Sitecore, it would be very difficult for us to exist as an agency and compete with others. There is a very solid commercial reason for having certification in place.
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Underpin partnerships that can result in work
Certification for our developers not also only establishes credibility, but also means we are part of a partner network for both Sitecore and Umbraco. Teams looking to hire an agency will often search for established partners.
The partnership model also opens up access to different assets, areas of support and strong relationships. To be transparent, while certification of individual developers is central to the partnership model, it can also have some other strings attached relating to commercial targets.
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Support employee experience of your developers
Investing in employees is critical. Encouraging and paying for the training to certify employees:
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Supports professional development and growth.
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Establishes career progression.
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Allows developers to specialise in areas that interest them.
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Encourages skills development and knowledge sharing.
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Makes you a more credible employer, helping attract the best people.
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Means you can retain staff for longer.
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Opens up more interesting projects and work.
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Overall provides a better overall employee experience, with the all the benefits that flow from this.
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Ensure coding best practices
Sometimes when we take on a new client, we find that the previous incumbent agency hasn’t always been coding in a way that aligns to accepted best practice. This can lead to problems further down the line, for example relating to performance or security, or can cause substantial issues with an upgrade project.
When we work with a client, we never want to be coding in a way that is going to create issues in the future. Certification helps to minimise the chances of that happening by ensuring we are coding to best practice and principles, ultimately supporting our clients for the long-term. The quality of coding has never been more important, especially when the use of AI-generated code can potentially cut corners.
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Culture of accountability and learning
Certification is about reaching a particular standard, keeping up to date with changes and best practices, and topping up skills. We’ve found that that helps contribute to a healthy culture of accountability, learning and improvement that is both good for the output of our work, but also in the relationships across the team and with our clients. People take more pride in their work, it leads to open and transparent conversations, and people recognise and respect each other’s particular skills.
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Support security
We take a security-first approach to everything we do. We undergo additional certification and accreditation around ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus, as well as meet various standards including the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) standard. Certification from Microsoft and also from DXP and CMS providers like Sitecore and Umbraco includes training that helps underpin security best practices.
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Matches the right developer to the right project
Certification supports more advanced skills and specialisms for particular developers and helps us to match the right person to the right project. For example, some of our developers have more experience and knowledge of working with Sitecore or Umbraco. We will always assign the right developer where their skills will make the most impact. We can also draw on their expertise to help resolve difficult issues within our support model.
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Good for the profession
Collectively we think adhering to certification and ensuring there is training is good for the profession as a whole. Providing structure that supports individual career progression, encouraging learning, and also establishing pathways for people coming into the industry, not only helps us as an agency, but also continue to maintain software development as a viable profession and attractive career option.
In a time when increasingly there will be intense disruption due to AI and naturally the profession will change, we think it’s important to have structure and standards in place.
Sticking with certification
Here at 3chillies certification and the partnership model is important for us. It establishes credibility, means we ensure we meet standards, and establishes a better employee experience for our developers. Everybody wins. If you’d like to discuss our certification or have any other questions about our expertise and experience, then get in touch!
