Saturday, January 5, 2008

On the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative Certifications for Practitioners

While this may be old news for some, there appears to be an emerging certification program for those who help companies to craft performance management initiatives with the Balanced Scorecard methodology.

The Balanced Scorecard Collaborative (a division of The Palladium Group founded by Dr. David P. Norton) is already active in certifying software that conforms to the Balanced Scorecard method. Now, the Collaborative is promoting two levels of certification for individuals as follows:

Balanced Scorecard Collaborative Certified™
  • awarded after completion of four Balanced Scorecard Collaborative How-To Training Seminars as well as an on-line multiple choice exam

  • reflects an "understanding and command" of the Balanced Scorecard body of knowledge
Balanced Scorecard Collaborative Certified Practitioner™
  • requires that a candidate is already Balanced Scorecard Collaborative Certified™

  • requires additional documented industry experience in implementing the Balanced Scorecard method
Both designations warrant "on going education and renewal requirements".

In my opinion, I believe the Practitioner level may be the most appealing and credible since it is awarded based on both certified knowledge and documented experience; this is quite similar to the approach taken by the Project Management Institute to qualify Project Management Professional (PMP) certification candidates.

To my mind, there will always be as many detractors as there are supporters of individual certification. Nevertheless, if you feel that certification is helpful in demonstrating knowledge and communicating differentiation among your peers, then this may well be the single best way to achieve these aims in the performance management space.

For more information on these designations click here.

What do you think? Is pursuing a Balanced Scorecard certification a worthwhile endeavour?

- Adrian Downes

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's not something that I think customers are asking for today which probably answera the question of it's value. However as performance manamgement becomes more of a discipline than a pipedream - I'd love to see consultants and partners proudly proclaim that they are certified BSC practitioners.

belle.me09 said...

I'm just starting to learn about the concept of balanced scoreboard through an article I read in http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/balanced_scorecard.htm. It's good to know that certifications are there so companies can gauge the quality of the practitioners they are hiring.