Governance

EMA Standard v3.0 — the Competency Framework, this Body of Knowledge and the Exam Content Outlines — is published by the Engineering Management Academy as a certification standard. This chapter states who maintains it, how it changes, how the public can comment on it, how study material is kept apart from examination development, and under what terms it may be used. These are commitments, written down so they can be held to.

The Academy sells no training and endorses none. The Body of Knowledge is free, and it is the whole of the examined material: nothing a candidate is asked to know exists outside it. That is the independence the credential rests on, and it depends on one internal rule that is stated here so it can be checked.

The people who write the Body of Knowledge do not write examination items, and the people who write examination items do not see item performance while writing the Body of Knowledge. The units teach judgment; the items test it; the two are developed against the same framework and the same outlines, never against each other. A unit's worked scenario is never drawn from the live item bank, and no item is ever written by copying a unit's scenario. The outlines are the only shared artifact: each states what a certified holder can do, and both the units and the items are written to that statement.

Where the Academy's size means one person holds both roles in time, the roles are held in sequence and recorded: the Body of Knowledge is closed at a release before item development against it begins, and item development does not reopen it.

• Major versions — a change to the framework's competencies, the outlines' weights or indicators, or the structure of the Body of Knowledge — at most once a year, with a public comment period before release and a changelog explaining every change and its reason.
• Minor versions — corrections, added sources, clarified prose, new technique cards — quarterly, without changing any competency, anchor, weight or indicator. Anchors are permanent: a minor version may add a principle at the end of a unit's list, never renumber.
• Errata — factual corrections that cannot wait — as needed, recorded in the changelog.

Every credential records the version of the framework it was examined against, and the Exam Content Outline of each certification states which version its examination currently uses. A candidate is always examined against a published, dated standard.

Before a major version is released, the Academy publishes the proposed changes — the framework diff, the outline diffs, and the units that change materially — for a comment period of not less than thirty days. Comments are received through the contact page and, where the commenter agrees, acknowledged by name in the release. The Academy publishes a summary of the comments it received and what it changed in response, and where it declined a comment, why. A comment does not need to be accepted to be answered.

EMA Standard v3.0 was prepared and reviewed within the Academy before publication. Reviewers of a version are never named without their agreement, and none is named for v3.0. Review is not endorsement, and a reviewer holds no interest in the Academy.

The EMA Body of Knowledge and the Exam Content Outlines are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 licence. You may copy, share, print and cite them, with attribution, for non-commercial purposes, without modification. To translate them, adapt them, or teach from them commercially, ask; the Academy answers such requests case by case and has said yes before.

The competency list of the EMA Competency Framework — the twenty-nine identifiers, titles and one-line descriptions — is published separately under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, so that it can be adopted freely, with attribution, in job descriptions, career ladders, rubrics and tools. A standard is adopted by being used, and the Academy wants the competency identifiers to become a shared vocabulary.

Neither licence grants any right to use the names Engineering Management Academy, EMA-I, EMP-II or EME-III, or the Academy's marks. A credential may be described by its name; a course or product may not be described as EMA-certified, EMA-approved or EMA-aligned.

When citing the standard, cite the version and, where it matters, the anchor: EMA Body of Knowledge v3.0, PL-1.P3 refers to one principle of one unit and will continue to, because anchors are permanent. Suggested form: Engineering Management Academy, Engineering Management Academy Body of Knowledge, version 3.0, engineeringmanagement.academy/body-of-knowledge.

Errors in the standard — a source that does not say what the unit claims, a definition that contradicts a unit, a broken anchor — are corrected in the next minor version and recorded in the changelog. Report them through the contact page; the Academy would rather know.