There has been a lot of buzz about ISO/IEC 17024: 2012 – Conformity Assessment – General requirements for bodies operating certification of persons.  With so many acronyms associated with this standard (ISO, IEC, ANSI, IAF, etc.) it is easy to get confused about who owns this standard and who accredits against it.   We will explore specifics of the standard itself in another post.  The purpose of this post is to help explain the various bodies associated with ISO 17024.

A job/task analysis is (JTA) is a very close look at a job, portion of a job, or concept job in order to identify the tasks and associated knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) required to competently perform the job.  A JTA is the foundation for the development of a certification program or a certificate program.  Only after the KSAs have been identified can a certification body or educational program determine how to measure competence of the KSAs or how to teach the KSAs.  There are multiple methods for conducting a JTA including using focus groups, structured interviews, job shadowing and observations, and surveying practitioners.  When conducting a JTA as the basis for a certification program, the method used is not as important as making sure the right subject-matter-experts (SMEs) participate in the process.