Context matters

The Sun project that took us to Japan was the development of a new Java certification exam. It's meant to be a beginning level exam for entry-level employees or new graduates who haven't yet worked as Java programmers to at least demonstrate a basic level of knowledge. For more than a month we (the American team) argued with our Japanese counterparts over the objectives of the exam.

We (the Americans) figured it would be a scaled-down, easier version of the current programmer exam, with an emphasis on the fundamentals of the Java language. Simple.

They (the Japanese), on the other hand, felt that some of our objectives were too technically detailed, but then they included all this other stuff they wanted to test people on. Things like understanding the difference between the three Java "editions" (micro, standard, and enterprise), how each of these editions make sense given a design goal, problems/tradeoffs with deployment of these various editions, basic UML, and on and on...

In other words, they wanted to test not just on the Java language, but also on the context in which Java is used. (Via Creating Passionate Users)