If you are going to delegate a specific software development project to a third-party team, the presence of certificates can be a significant advantage when choosing a specific vendor. However, how can you understand what exactly they mean and why do IT specialists receive them at all?
In this article, we will explain to you the significance and the essence of one such certificate – GraphQL certification based on the experience of our Fronted Tech Lead Developer Oleh Dutchenko.
Is It Worth Collaborating with Specialists Without Certificates?
In fact, the lack of certificates does not mean the low level of qualifications of the developers you are going to hire. Rather, having them is something like a university diploma, which does not show the real level of knowledge of a specialist but, at the same time, forms a general understanding that this specialist is constantly improving and expanding his or her expertise. As for Apollo Graph Developer certification, it allows developers to close knowledge gaps both in Apollo and GraphQL.
In general, Apollo is a free ecosystem of tools aimed at optimizing data-driven operations of web applications and websites. In turn, GraphQL is a data query and data manipulation language developed by Facebook’s team and used to build web-oriented programming interfaces. Together, these software technologies allow developers to implement intelligent caching and declarative data retrieval into their projects to speed up their performance and write less code.
When developers decide to become GraphQL certified, they gain access to a free learning platform with video tutorials and accompanying step-by-step written tutorials, including tests and coding challenges. Depending on the number of courses completed successfully on this platform, developers can receive certificates of different levels.
Graph Developer – Associate Certification
Graph Developer – Associate is a basic Apollo certification, the receipt of which means that the developer knows how to use GraphQL in various types of projects to increase their performance and economic indicators to the maximum.
Developers who received the Apollo Odyssey certification have a deep foundational knowledge of GraphQL and the Apollo toolkit to design graphs, run the Apollo Server, and build queries using the Apollo Client on the frontend.
To obtain the Apollo Graph Developer – Associate certificate, a specialist must complete the first five training courses.
Graph Developer – Professional Certification
Graph Developer – Professional is a continuation of Graph Developer – Associate, which is aimed at increasing the skills of backend developers necessary for a deeper understanding of backend processes and making more effective and flexible decisions in the development process in terms of potential business benefits for the client.
Specifically, after receiving this certificate, developers are able to apply Apollo Federation concepts to build a federated supergraph or move an existing monolithic graph to federation. Thus, this type of Apollo GraphQL certification validates technical skills in GraphQL and the Apollo tools ecosystem.
At the same time, not only back-end developers receive a Graph Developer – Professional certificate. This practice is common in our company among frontend software engineers as well, which allows them to work more consistently with a team of backend specialists.
Why Product Owners Should Still Check for Certification
In general, obtaining certification in any of the technologies allows IT specialists to systematize their knowledge and effectively apply it from a business point of view. It also strengthens their expertise since most often, specialists work with only a limited set of tools and, due to their busy work schedules, rarely have the opportunity to go beyond the knowledge acquired previously in advance.
Finally, as we mentioned above, many developers earn certifications in technologies that are outside of their day-to-day work tasks, but that their colleagues actively use. Thanks to this, they begin to work more productively in a team, which undoubtedly affects the quality of the solutions they produce. Additionally, we note that many software development companies indicate that their applicants must have certain certificates to get the desired job offer.
As for the importance of checking whether developers have certifications from a product owner’s point of view, it is obvious: even though uncertified specialists can do their work efficiently, hiring their objectively assessed colleagues reduces the risk that your resources allocated to the project will not be used to the maximum.
If you would like to entrust the development of your software solution to our team of certified developers, feel free to contact us right now.