Compared to professions like architects, Med Doctors, surveyors, civil engineers, accountants etc, who have practiced their professions for centuries, Computing & IT is a very new profession, having been made hugely popular in just the space of approx the last 20 years.Not 200 or 2000 years, but just 20 years. My point is Med Docs have been practicing for thousands of years and had already established "good practice" just through evolution of the subject matter alone. The British Medical Association (BMA) has been around for nearly 200 years now and I doubt, in it's first 20 years, it had any strict procedures in place for, for example, "blood letting". The same can be said for Architects & Architecture, or even Banking procedures, honed over the past few hundred years. Today IT has taken over the world. The most popular retail trading platforms are Ebay and Amazon, again just 20 years old... just as old as the most popular desktop OS today. These are just few examples. The BCS is a Chartered Institute of IT dealing with a world which changed in the blink of an eyelid... and will continue to change through IT. Millions of IT professionals have sprouted everywhere (i used to be a bread delivery, "white van man"), thousands of IT projects are failing, yes.. this is true. What the BCS needs is 'time'. Time to evolve, time to define good practices, which it does through its publications, talks, networking etc. In my mind, joining the BCS now is the exact equivalent of joining the BMA in the year 1890. What it worth it for the Doctors back then? I doubt they thought so at the time. Is it BCS worth joining? I cannot say. Will it be a major body in 180 years time? Yes I believe it sure will be and, in this respect, based on these timescales, I believe the BCS is making, at the very least, "good solid progress". At this point I will make a disclaimer and mention I am not a member of BCS but, through having just entered for one of their awards last week, I hope to be a member. Will I get anything out of it? Maybe yes, maybe no but, as someone said above, I'd rather have it around, than not.