For some time, the use of a competence-based approach to the assessment of CSEP experience has been postulated as an alternative approach to the current programme. If successful, the revised approach would eliminate the ‘timeserved’ experience requirements commonly cited for the slower increase of CSEPs in the United Kingdom. In mid-2017, Ian Presland, the Professional Development Director for INCOSE UK, led a UK Chapter pilot on behalf of INCOSE. Exploring the use of the competence based experience assessment as part of the CSEP application review activity, Ian presents the case of ‘competence-based CSEP’ in detail and suggests a potential way forward. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of INCOSE UK or INCOSE and were first published in PPI SyEN_68.
By Ian Presland
In 2004, the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) launched its Systems Engineering Professional (SEP) programme with the introduction of the "Certified Systems Engineering Professional" (CSEP) designation. This provided a formal method through which practitioners in Systems Engineering PPI-007045-1A 7 of 113 could have their education, technical knowledge, and experience independently validated by INCOSE accredited assessors. The programme later added an introductory level (below CSEP) called “Associate Systems Engineering Professional (ASEP)”, and an advanced level (above CSEP) called “Expert Systems Engineering professional (ESEP)”. The programme currently recognizes around 2800 SEPs1 across these three levels worldwide. However, while CSEP numbers continue to grow generally, in some countries, the increase in the number of CSEPs has been lower than expected. In the UK and Europe, one reason commonly cited for this is that the CSEP 16
programme includes time-based measures of experience as a proxy for acquired “competence”. The inclusion of these time-based elements means that the CSEP designation cannot be readily integrated into corporate HR job descriptions or competencedevelopment frameworks; and, more critically, mandating CSEP as a job prerequisite could arguably be viewed as failing to meet current European Union (EU) age discrimination legislation2. Details concerning this matter are discussed later in this article. Furthermore, while the current CSEP programme requires that “depth” and “breadth” of experience be documented, there are no criteria characterising an acceptable minimum set of skills; robustly proving you have an appropriate duration of experience in the area is deemed sufficient. Therefore, two candidates documenting similar depth and breadth could have rather different skills profiles. Does this matter? Perhaps not. They are “the same” because both have documented experience performing tasks defined by INCOSE as part of the technical area definitions and both meet the minimum “months of experience” requirements. The CSEP designation is intended to be a guide. However, since Preview
2019