Governance

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

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. The credential's independence rests on that, and the independence depends on one internal rule, 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 and the items test it. Both are developed against the same framework and the same outlines, and 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 artifact the two share. Each outline states what a certified holder can do, and the units and the items are both written to that statement.

Where the Academy's size means one person holds both roles over time, the roles are held in sequence and the sequence is 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 change the framework's competencies, the outlines' weights or indicators, or the structure of the Body of Knowledge. They are released at most once a year, after a public comment period, with a changelog that explains every change and the reason for it.
• Minor versions carry corrections, added sources, clarified prose and new technique cards. They are released quarterly, and they do not change 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. A minor version carries its number only on the documents it revises. The framework, and so the version a credential records, changes only with a major version.
• Errata are factual corrections that cannot wait. They are issued as needed and recorded in the changelog.

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

Before releasing a major version, 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 gives its reasons wherever it declined a comment. A comment is answered whether or not it is accepted.

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, except for the two parts named in the next paragraph. 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.

Two parts of the standard are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 instead. The first is the competency list of the EMA Competency Framework: the twenty-nine identifiers, titles and one-line descriptions. The second is the proficiency indicators of the three Exam Content Outlines, meaning each statement of what a certified Associate, Professional or Leader can do, with its identifier and scope tag. Both may be copied, adapted and built on, commercially or not, with attribution, in job descriptions, career ladders, rubrics and tools. The rest of each outline (its specification, weights, scenario contexts and exclusions) stays under the licence above. A standard is adopted by being used, and the Academy wants the competency identifiers, and what each looks like in practice, to become a shared vocabulary.

The examination questions are not published and are licensed under neither.

Neither licence grants any right to use the names Engineering Management Academy, EMA-I, EMP-II, EML-III or EMX-AI, 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 v3.1, PL-1.P3 refers to one principle of one unit, and because anchors are permanent it will go on doing so. Suggested form: Engineering Management Academy, Engineering Management Academy Body of Knowledge, version 3.1, engineeringmanagement.academy/body-of-knowledge. The How to Cite chapter gives the APA, Chicago and BibTeX forms, and the attribution line for the openly licensed parts.

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