Competency blueprint

What the assessment tests, before anyone sits it.

An exam whose content is a surprise cannot be prepared for, and an employer who cannot see what was tested cannot tell what the credential means. Publishing the blueprint first also makes the assessment falsifiable: if the questions do not match what is below, that is visible. This is version 0.2.0.

Status: Draft — not signed off. Review by the standards council, which owns the blueprint and has not been seated. Until then the weightings and levels below are the Institute’s working position, published so they can be argued with — not a specification any candidate has been assessed against. No candidate has been assessed against this document, by Tomorrow’s practitioner qualification or anyone else. See the public ledger for the rest of what does and does not exist.

Version 0.2.0Published blueprint.jsonWhy this exists

Core professional judgment

Six domains, weighted.

Domains of the core professional judgment assessment, with the share of the assessment each carries and the most demanding level of judgement its items may reach.
DomainWeightingLevel
01Contract design & wordingReading a contract as the person who will have to resolve it. Identifying the wording that will be disputed, stating why, and rewriting it so that two resolvers acting in good faith reach the same answer. The published failure-pattern registry is the floor here, not the ceiling: a candidate is expected to find defects it does not catalogue.Assessed against: ECS Part A — data model · ECS Part B — Definitions · Failure-pattern registry22%Judgement
02Settlement & resolution governanceDeciding who resolves, on what evidence, within what window, and what happens when the named source goes silent or is contradicted. Includes the case the candidate would rather not have: resolving against their own client, on the record, with reasons.Assessed against: ECS Part C — fallback waterfall · ECS Part D — Determinations Committee20%Judgement
03Market integritySeparating manipulation that surveillance can catch from manipulation only design can prevent. Reading order and resolution-source patterns for the signature of each, and knowing which of the two the venue in front of you is exposed to.Assessed against: ECS integrity terms · Code of Ethics, Standard I16%Analysis
04Funding, margin & collateralFunding-rate behaviour, index construction, collateral haircuts and liquidation cascades in venues that never close — and how each interacts with an event that resolves discontinuously.Assessed against: ECS execution terms (OTC collateral and clearing)14%Analysis
05Measurement & calibrationWhat would have to be true for a forecast-quality claim to be checkable. Scoring rules, bucketing, sample floors, and recognising the comparison that flatters the person making it.Assessed against: Data & methods14%Analysis
06Supervision & professional conductClient communication, conflicts, record-keeping, escalation, and the governance of AI use in the candidate’s own work — including declining to act, and saying so in writing.Assessed against: Code of Ethics · Conflict of Interest and Recusal Policy14%Judgement
Total100%

Levels

The level is a ceiling, not a quota: it states the most demanding thing an item in that domain may ask for. The distribution is itself a claim about the credential — it is meant to test decisions, not recall.

recall
The candidate can state the rule
application
The candidate can apply it to a described case
analysis
The candidate can take a real artefact apart and find the defect
judgement
The candidate can decide under conflict, and defend the decision

Specialization assessments

Taken in addition to the core, not instead of it.

Event markets

Contract wording, probability, settlement governance and market integrity.

Perpetuals & crypto derivatives

Funding, index design, collateral, liquidation and 24/7 market risk.

Novel contract design

Payoff architecture, manipulation resistance, margin logic and scenario analysis.

OTC & bilateral event contracts

Counterparty eligibility, master agreements and confirmations that incorporate the ECS Definitions, collateral, determinations and trade reporting.

Supervision & integrity

Client communications, conflicts, records, AI governance, surveillance and escalation.

Weightings for the specialization assessments are not published yet. They will be, before anyone sits one — that is the same promise as the core, and it is on /standards in writing.

How it changes

Versioned, and argued with.

  1. 0.2.0

    The blueprint becomes the standard Tomorrow’s practitioner qualification is assessed against; every domain is anchored to a published standard; an OTC specialization is added.

    • The Institute no longer plans a credential of its own. The separately planned PMA-CICP credential is retired; Tomorrow’s practitioner qualification is assessed against this blueprint instead.
    • Each core domain names the Institute standards it is assessed against: the Event Contract Specification, the failure-pattern registry, the Code of Ethics and the Conflict of Interest and Recusal Policy.
    • New specialization: OTC & bilateral event contracts.
    • Weightings and judgement levels are unchanged. Status remains draft.
  2. 0.1.0

    First draft. Six core domains, weighted, each mapped to a standing research track.

    • Core assessment domains published with weightings and judgement levels.
    • Specialization assessments listed against the credential architecture already published on /credential.
    • Status is draft: nothing here has been reviewed by the standards council, which is not yet seated.

Entries are appended, never edited. A weighting that moves gets a new version and a line saying so, because a blueprint that can be revised silently is not a commitment — it is a description of whatever the exam turned out to be.