ISO/IEC 24773:2008 establishes a framework for comparison of schemes for certifying software engineering professionals. A certification scheme is a set of certification requirements for software engineering professionals. ISO/IEC 24773:2008 specifies the items that a scheme is required to contain and indicates what should be defined for each item.
ISO/IEC 24773:2008 will facilitate the portability of software engineering professional certifications between different countries or organizations. At present, different countries and organizations have adopted different approaches on the topic that are implemented by means of regulations and bylaws. The intention of ISO/IEC 24773:2008 is to be open to these individual approaches by providing a framework for expressing them in a common scheme that can lead to understanding.