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The following steps are necessary in a certification development process. These conform to guidelines established by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies and the National Organization of Competency Assurance. The goal of the ALSP professional certification program is to provide a statistically sound and legally defensible certification program. This involves the work of a lot of professionals and generally takes one year to complete and administer the first exam.

There are four major steps: job analysis, test specifications, test development and cut-score study:

1. Job Analysis: After the testing company is retained, the certification process begins with a panel of subject matter experts from a broad cross-section of the industry. They describe specifically what they do at their jobs, what they need to know to do their jobs, how often they do it, and how important it is to their jobs.
   
   The results of the initial job analysis written by the subject matter experts is converted to a survey that is taken by members of the candidate population who are asked whether they agree or disagree — and how strongly — with the task descriptions of the subject matter experts.

2. Test Specifications: The results of the job analysis survey are tabulated and analyzed by the psychometrician, and subject matter experts to create a final report, which forms the basis for the test specification or the exam content outline that describes what content should be on the exam.

3. Test Development: Working from the exam content outline, a panel of subject matter experts prepares items or questions and answers for the topics on the outline. The panel meets for a two-day face-to-face meeting that starts with several hours of training conducted by the testing company’s psychometrician. Then the panel may break into smaller groups by subject matter expertise, or individuals may work alone to create test items using an online item-writing system provided by the testing vendor.
   
   For an exam that will have 100–150 items, there will usually be 200–250 items prepared for the item pool, and there will typically be at least one and possibly two forms of the exam to begin with. After the initial items are prepared the test development panel meets as a group to assess the various items to check for ambiguity and correctness of answers so that one optional answer doesn’t tip off the correct response, make it easy to eliminate an incorrect answer, etc.

4. Cut-Score Study: After the exam is administered the first time, another panel determines the cut-score; i.e., the score that will be used to determine who passed or failed the certification. They go through the exam one question at a time and state how many applicants should get the correct answer assuming a given level of experience and competence. Their answers together with statistics from the actual results are used to determine the cut-score.

Certification programs are usually not accredited until they have administered several exams. After the first test is administered, it will typically take six to eight weeks to allow for processing and determination of the cut-score. Depending on statistics relating to the size of the first test groups, it may be possible to provide immediate feedback after the exam has been administered several times.