The books
NBOP writes a book series. NBOP does not require it, no assessment is built from it, and buying it changes nothing about how a candidate is assessed. This page exists so that the relationship between the two is legible before anyone spends money.
NBOP Principles of Practice
Six volumes. One covers the core practice of reading an operation across all eight domains. The other five apply the standard inside a single endorsement niche, and are named exactly as the endorsements are named.
There is no volume for a domain. Domains are what the standard describes; endorsements are what a certificant can hold. The series follows the credential, not the syllabus.
Mind
The core practice. How an operator perceives the state of an operation across all eight domains, and why competent operators misread it.
Written, not yet publishedIntegrated Operations
The standard applied where operations is the whole surface rather than one function of it.
PlannedMarketing Operations
The standard applied to the machinery behind demand, attribution and campaign delivery.
PlannedRevenue and Sales Operations
The standard applied to pipeline, forecasting, territory and the systems that carry them.
PlannedCustomer Success Operations
The standard applied to retention, onboarding and the operating rhythm after the sale.
PlannedAI and Automation Operations
The standard applied where work is delegated to systems that act, and to the controls around them.
PlannedWhy five of the six are not written
NBOP has committed to publishing the findings of its job task analysis, including the ones that contradict the draft standard. What each endorsement niche actually contains, and how it should be weighted, is one of the things that analysis decides.
Writing volumes II to VI first would leave two options once the data arrives: rewrite them, or defend them against NBOP's own findings. The second is how a standards body loses the only thing it has. So they wait, and the wait is the point.
There is one exception to that rule, and it is narrow: where a volume exists to correct something NBOP has already published, waiting would mean leaving the uncorrected version standing for longer. Correcting NBOP outranks NBOP's own publishing sequence.
What the books are not
Purchase of this book is not required in order to sit any National Board of Operations Professionals assessment and confers no advantage. The assessment is built from the published standard, not from this book.
That is a claim, and a claim of this kind is worth nothing unless something enforces it. These are the arrangements that do:
- The standard is published free and in full. Everything an assessment covers is readable without paying anything.
- Item writers come from the standards committee and are not the author of the books.
- The author of the books does not see items, does not sit on scoring, and does not adjudicate individual results.
- There is no version of any assessment that is easier if you bought something.
It is a way to learn the work. It is not a way to pass.
Availability
Volume I is written, illustrated and typeset. It is not yet listed for sale, so this site carries no price and no purchase link for it. When the listing exists, these pages will carry the identifier and the link, and nothing else about them will change.