Organizational badge collecting

Whenever a Boy Scout masters a new Scouting skill, he earns a merit badge. On ceremonial occasions, he wears the badges as a visible certificate of proficiency granted by a world-class authority. Internationally, 95,000 or so organizations wear the badge of ISO 9000 [1] conformance. To them it's an important accomplishment in a highly competitive marketplace. Furthermore, it's just the first of a chest-full of badges that serious software developers will soon be wearing as they complete their own youthful rites of passage toward software engineering as a profession rather than an ideal.