The Test Development Process: A Leadership Playbook for Exam Excellence

As the 2025 College World Series (CWS) kicks off in Omaha on June 13, let’s explore how you can make your certification program championship caliber and how Quadterion empowers credentialing organizations to make winning decisions at every turn.

Pre-game Scouting: Kickstarting the Test Development Process

Just as CWS teams carefully scout their competition, credentialing organizations must begin their test development process with a clear understanding of industry expectations. Scouting grades are based on measurable data, such as fastball velocity and speed. These grades indicate how the industry views and projects players. You can use similar data-driven methods to determine your credential’s value.

Your Credentialing Scouting Report:

1. Scouts spend plenty of time observing games. You should conduct job task analyses with industry subject matter experts (SMEs) with firsthand experience to get a broad view of what is typical and expected.
2. Just as any good scout must understand the fundamentals of the game, you need to identify the core competencies and specialized skills that matter in the field.
3. Put these analytics into action by mapping credential objectives to real-world professional challenges.

Bullpen Strategy: Build your certification framework like a pitching rotation. Just as baseball aces are the elite, starting pitchers for a team, “ace” competencies, which are the most critical to professional success, should receive more assessment weight. However, you must still ensure adequate coverage of supporting knowledge domains that act as relief pitchers for your top competencies.

First Inning: Building a Strong Foundation

The foundational elements of your program, like the first inning at Charles Schwab Field, set the tone for your certification home run.

Major League Baseball All-Star Kenny Lofton, ranked 15^th among all-time stolen base leaders, once said, “You can’t put your shoes on without your socks. Everything works together—shoes, socks, pants and shirt. If one is missing, you’re in trouble.” This quote illustrates the need to build a solid foundation for a successful outcome.

Leadoff Strategy:

• Define psychometrically sound test specifications to kick off the game plan. Will the test be valid, reliable, fair and measure what it’s intended to?
• Identify high-impact performance domains. Just as leadoff hitters need to find the balance between skills like getting on base and disrupting the pitcher’s rhythm, performance domains should clearly define the specific aspects of performance you want to evaluate.
• Establish clear, defensible passing standards that are transparent and fair. The whole team, including stakeholders and test takers, needs to know and understand how and why passing scores accurately reflect competence.

Defensive Positioning: Winning teams position their defense before the first pitch. You can position your certification program for success through careful infrastructure development, including secure testing platforms, a solid network of SMEs and well-planned governance structures to support test development.

Middle Innings: Item Bank Strategies in the Test Development Process

Championship teams must excel at managing their pitching lineup through nine innings. Similarly, certification excellence requires attentive management of your test’s item development.

The Pitching Rotation:

• Monitor the quality-quantity balance in your item bank. Every pitcher has strengths and weaknesses, but these qualities must be balanced for situational effectiveness. A well-managed item bank adds flexibility and precision to the test development process, allowing for greater flexibility in adapting assessments to various contexts.
• Prioritize development resources toward domains of higher importance. The aces pitch first because they are the strongest players for that role. Likewise, you should put more resources toward the domains with the highest potential impact, urgency and alignment with professional or strategic goals. Don’t exhaust resources on overly complex item types when simpler ones suffice.
• Know when to bring in specialized item writers for challenging domains. Pitching rotations take into account how individual pitchers have fared against specific batters. Make smart item writer selections to tackle the hardest hitters.

Late Innings: Closing with Psychometric Excellence

Winning teams shine in high-pressure situations. The final validation of your certification exam is where preparation meets execution.

The Closer Mentality:

• Your 9^th inning  strategy should include rigorous statistical analysis to ensure validity and reliability. At this point in the game, you want to show consistency and stability to finish strong.
• Validate item performance through beta testing to check whether the assessment meets test takers’ expectations and functions smoothly in a real-world environment. This stage can uncover hidden issues that weren’t caught earlier.
• Look for differential item functioning (DIF), the certification equivalent of unforced errors. In sports, unforced errors are mistakes in play attributed to the player’s own skill issue, rather than the skill or effort of their opponent. Likewise, DIF is a situation where individuals with the same underlying ability perform differently on a test item, potentially indicating bias. Both situations indicate problems to be addressed to improve performance.

CWS-Worthy Tactics for Certification Delivery

The teams that make it to Omaha have mastered fundamentals and advanced strategy. To bolster your program’s success, you should aim for well-aligned values and operational dynamics. Your certification delivery should include:

A Sign System:

• Create clear candidate communication pathways to keep the process transparent and easy-to-follow for test takers.
• Develop efficient test administration protocols, including a Test Administrator Manual (TAM), to guide administrator procedures.
• Practice scenario planning for delivery challenges. If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready when something goes wrong.

Clubhouse Culture:

• Build a network of engaged SMEs to best support your development work. Like every player contributes to a team’s performance, SMEs are critical to shaping credible tests. You can download a free SME Role Clarity Guide in our Practice Analysis Command Kit!
• Help certification organizations communicate certification value to potential employers, just like team managers advocate for a player’s value to scouts to enhance career prospects.
• Behind the scenes, maintain operational readiness through technology, security and candidate support. This is your training staff, equipment managers and support team making sure the players are game-ready.
• Warmups, strategy sessions and lineup decisions are foundational to success. Develop pre-launch protocols to guarantee smooth delivery for all stakeholders. Preparation and discipline will pay out.

The Leadership Dugout

Championship managers share several common traits, including strong leadership capabilities, attention to detail, building relationships and a commitment to player development. Emotional intelligence, effective communication and strategic planning all contribute to winning strategies.

The Championship Manager’s Approach:

• Build specialized teams with clearly defined roles (item writers, reviewers, psychometricians).
• Establish decision authority hierarchies for various certification scenarios, like choosing your ace pitcher vs. situational relief pitchers.
• Create communication channels that enable rapid response without confusion. Consider investing in software that streamlines communication among stakeholders, such as Quadterion’s SqOne.

SqOne: Quadterion’s Leadership Dashboard

We’ve scaled best-in-class exam development practices into a modern, seamless, intuitive solution for organizations seeking a better way to create exams. With SqOne, you get:

• Role-based access that delivers the right information to the right decision-makers
• Streamlined approval workflows that eliminate bottlenecks
• Secure, centralized communication

• An integrated reference library, which allows you to link exam questions directly to authoritative textbooks, research papers and other supporting materials

Quadterion: Your Coach for Certification Success

Every championship team needs an exceptional coaching staff. In the world of certification development, Quadterion serves as your dugout coach, providing:

• Psychometric analysis that turns complex data into actionable insights
• Strategic guidance for navigating complex credentialing challenges
• Implementation support that translates theory into practical execution
• Comparative benchmarking against industry standards and historical performance

Remember what every coach in Omaha will tell their players this June: champions aren’t made on game day. They’re built through the countless decisions and preparations that precede the game, guided by leaders who know exactly when and how to make the critical calls.

Whether you’re launching a new credential or revitalizing an established program, approach your certification development with the same dedication that drives college athletes to Omaha.

With Quadterion in your dugout, you’re ready to step up to the plate and deliver a certification program that knocks it out of the park!

Reach out today!