For people who already run operations.

What it costs

Free, permanently, to anyone: the standard itself, the eligibility check, the public register, verification of any certificate number, and appeals. A body that charges you to question its own decision has an incentive it should not have.

What NBOP-CP certifies

Eight domains. Not eight subjects to revise, eight things an organisation needs working at once in order to see its own state and change it.

The relative weight of each domain in the assessment is being set by a job task analysis of practising operators rather than by us. Until that closes, the standard states equal provisional weighting and says so plainly. You can take part in it here.

Who can sit it

Three criteria. They are arithmetic, they are applied by the same code for everyone, and they are published before you answer anything.

1. At least two years holding accountability for how work gets done. Not doing the work. Being accountable for how it is done.
2. That accountability current, or ended within the last 24 months.
3. Personal accountability in at least four of the eight domains. Depth in one is not what this certifies.

None of the following is required, and none of it is asked for: a degree of any kind in any subject, a particular job title, a particular company size, membership of anything, or a course from us or from anyone else.

Whichever way it comes out, you leave with your own accountability mapped across all eight domains. That map is the useful part and it is yours either way.

The assessment

What is decided, and what is not yet, stated separately. A body that is vague about the difference is telling you something.

Decided, and it is policy rather than preference

• Scenario based, not recall based. Items describe a business and ask you to diagnose it. There are no vocabulary questions, because knowing the definition of operating cadence is not the skill being certified.
• Written by practitioners, not by the author of the books. Item writers are drawn from the standards committee. The person who writes the preparation material does not write the questions and does not see them.
• Delivered remotely and proctored. No test centre, no travel.
• Cut score set by a formal standard setting study, not by picking a round number. The method and the panel are published.
• Sat again to recertify. Three years, then the assessment again. There is no continuing education credit route, because credits certify attendance.

Set after the job task analysis closes

Item count, time limit, the weight of each domain and the passing standard are all downstream of the analysis. Publishing them now would mean inventing them, and then quietly changing them later.

Published before the first assessment is sat

These are commitments, not aspirations, and you should hold NBOP to them.

• The examination blueprint, showing every domain and its weight, traceable to the job task analysis.
• The standard setting summary, showing how the cut score was arrived at and by whom.
• The code of professional conduct and the testing code of conduct.
• The pass rate, stated with the raw numbers rather than as a percentage on its own, every year.
• The appeals procedure, and the count of appeals heard and upheld.

What holding it actually does

A certificate that only its holder can produce is worth very little to the person deciding whether to hire them. So the credential lives in a public register rather than in a PDF.

Endorsements

One credential, then the niche you actually work in stacked on top of it.

An endorsement is not a second certification and it does not exist on its own. It sits on NBOP-CP and says that the general practice was applied inside a specific function. The designation carries a letter for the endorsement, so a marketing operations holder writes NBOP-CPM.

Endorsements require a current NBOP-CP. They cannot be bought first and they lapse when the core credential does.

Preparation

NBOP writes books. NBOP does not require them, and the assessment is not built from them.

That distinction is the whole reason a certification governing board exists inside this organisation, and it is worth being precise about how it is enforced rather than just asserting it.

• The standard is published free and in full. Everything the 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 the assessment that is easier if you bought something.

The Operator Standard is the book series that teaches the domains. It is being written now, one volume for the core practice and one for each endorsement niche. It is a way to learn the work. It is not a way to pass.

Who should not bother

Published as loudly as the rest, because a standard that is vague about who it excludes is not a standard.

• You have held accountability for how work gets done for less than two years.
• You held it, but the last time was more than two years ago.
• Your accountability sits in fewer than four of the eight domains.
• You are looking for a credential that will get you into operations. This one certifies practice that already exists. It does not create it.
• You want a course. There is not one to sell you.
• You want a credential you can quietly drop if the result is unflattering. Every credential issued is publicly verifiable forever, including the ones that expire and the ones that get revoked.

Questions