devdev: Developing Professional Developers
devdev
developing professional developers. A CoderLevelUp initiative in partnership with IITPSA - the professional body for IT professionals in South Africa, with over 60 years of history and global affiliation through IP3.
The core idea is simple: make it easier to employ and be employed as a software developer in South Africa.
Why This Matters
South Africa has a genuine critical skills shortage in software development. At the same time, there are thousands of self-taught developers, bootcamp graduates, online learners, and career-switchers who can’t easily prove what they know or get the professional recognition they’ve earned.
devdev is trying to fix that - by working with IITPSA to make their professional framework relevant, accessible, and genuinely useful to coders at every stage.
What’s Real Right Now
The IITPSA partnership is live. We operate under an open MOU. The IITPSA Certified Member tier now exists - a concrete rung on the ladder.
The working group is active. Kelvin Nhlapo and :David Campey have been discussing what a modern, inclusive professional framework for SA developers actually looks like.
The SFIA framework is our foundation - 102 skills, vendor-neutral, globally recognised. It gives us a common language for describing what developers do and at what level.
The membership ladder we’re working toward:
| Tier | Description |
|---|---|
| Student | Learning, not yet in the profession |
| Affiliate | Entering the profession |
| Associate | Working developer, growing |
| Member | Established practitioner |
| Certified | SFIA Level 3 - proven professional |
| Professional | SFIA Level 5 - senior practitioner |
What We’re Trying to Build
Three things:
1. Easier employment pathways. Clearer definitions of what “junior”, “mid”, and “senior” mean in practice. Helps hiring managers and helps developers advocate for themselves. Relevant to critical skills visa pathways too.
2. Recognition of diverse learning. Whether you learned via freeCodeCamp, edX cs50, AWS training, Google Digital Skills, or sheer persistence - that should count. devdev is working to make that recognition real.
3. CPD that actually matters. Continuing Professional Development points for things developers already do - attending conferences, mentoring, community involvement. Critically: mentoring counts as first-class CPD too!. That’s how we scale the profession - getting experienced developers to invest back into the community.
What’s Not Yet Real
We want to be honest. devdev has genuine potential but hasn’t yet materialised as a fully delivered programme. The webinar series is planned but not yet running. The DevConf collaboration is in discussion. The full CPD framework is in progress.
This is a community initiative. It moves at the pace of the people involved, and we have limited bandwidth alongside everything else CoderLevelUp is doing.
Come Help Us Make It Real
If you’re a developer who cares about this - a professional who wants a framework that recognises how real developers grow - we need you in the conversation.
Get in touch: info@coderlevelup.org
Useful links:
- IITPSA
- SFIA Framework
- CodeRetreat - the community practice complement to devdev
