Professional Development

Why Professional Development?

No matter how good your skills are, you can always make them better. And no matter how good your organization is, you can always make it better too. Software engineering research has shown for decades that there is at least a 10:1 difference in productivity among different programmers with similar levels of experience, and the same 10:1 difference applies to different teams working within the same industries. Professional development bridges the gap and helps organizations become more productive, produce higher quality software, and ultimately become more effective overall.

Construx is dedicated to assisting individuals, project teams, and organizations improve their software development capabilities. We support professional development in numerous ways:

We’ve created industry-leading training in management, requirements, design, construction, testing, and other software development topics.

We provide business-results-focused consulting, including helping organizations transition to or improve their Agile adoptions, and our Organizational Assessment that assesses your group’s strengths and weaknesses and charts a specific, prioritized path for improvement.

We have created a ground-breaking Professional Development Ladder that provides structured career pathing for software professionals regardless of specific technical focus (i.e., development, test, QA, or management). This ladder can be adapted for private implementation at specific companies.

We actively participate in industry standards committees that are advancing professional development in software. Construx employees have played numerous active roles in the IEEE’s CSDP certification program, and Construx’s Principal Consultant, Steve Tockey, currently chairs the committee that oversees the program. Construx’s CEO, Steve McConnell, is past chair of the IEEE Professional Practices Committee which oversees initiatives including defining accreditation standards for universities, overseeing accreditation programs such as the CSDP program, and generally supporting the field of software development in progressing toward increasing professionalism.