Category Archives: Certifications

by | May 21, 2013 · 10:21 AM

What is Business Architecture? Part 2

By Allen Brown, President and CEO, The Open Group

I recently wrote that I had heard and read the opinions of a number of people about what is Business Architecture, as I am sure many of us have but I wanted to understand it from the perspective of people who actually had Business Architect in their job title.  So I wrote to 183 people in Australia and New Zealand and asked them.

The initial summary (blog) of the responses I received was focused on the feedback from Business Architects who were employed by organizations I think of as consumers; this one is focused on the feedback from consultants, ranging from those who are working on their own to others who are working with some of the largest consulting firms that we know.

Why I chose the countries I did and the questions I asked are contained in that earlier blog.

Again the responses have been amazing and thank you to everyone who took the time to do so.  They included some wonderful insights into their role and into their beliefs with respect to Business Architecture.

Summarizing the feedback from the consultants is even more difficult than that of the consumers.  Understandably, each of them has their own approach.  I have found it very difficult to decide what to leave out in order to get this down to a reasonable length for a blog.

It is important to repeat that I am still in the process of seeking to understand, so I would be really pleased to hear from anyone who has such a role, to correct any misunderstandings I might have or erroneous conclusions I may have drawn.

The first point of note from the responses is that Business Architecture is still evolving and finding its place in the enterprise.  While the consumers saw it as somewhere between immature and missing in action, the consultants tended to look at the how and why of its evolution.  In one case the view was that Business Architecture is evolving in response to a demand for greater business oriented control over transformation, while another reported, disappointedly, that business architecture is often seen as Business Process Review/Improvement on steroids.  Other comments included:

  • Generally Business Architecture is seen as business process review and/or business process improvement. There is not much real Business Architecture going on at the moment.
  • It is not widely understood at this point in time.  This first initiative will be conducted in a lightweight manner to gain the business buy in and get some projects onto the roadmap.  Delivery time will be a key factor in prioritization as we will be looking for some projects with shorter duration and lower complexity so some tangible benefits can be realized
  • It is not formally recognized.  Last year I was in the supply chain team (who also deal with Lean and other operational improvement skills).  We have Business Analysts, and a People and Change Team.  We have several areas than do Operating Models.  To me various elements of these would be included under the Business Architecture banner.

In common with the consumer viewpoint, the focus of Business Architecture is on the “What”.  Some of the comments included:

  • The Business Architecture will exist with or without technology, but as soon as technology is involved, the technology exists to service the business architecture, and the business architecture should be the input to the technology and application architecture.
  • Make recommendations of what projects the business should perform, in addition to relevant and timely corrections to the governance structure, business processes, and the structure of business information
  • The business architecture I am referring to is not the traditional element of the IT based Enterprise Architecture, but a framework that is totally business oriented and in which the whole business, including IT, can commit to in order to truly understand their problems and most of all the potential to genuinely improve the business.
  • “Business Architecture is not about telling people how to do their job at a detail level. Its function is to help us all to understand how together we can achieve the business goals and objectives
  • The primary focus of the Business Architect includes the analysis of business motivations and business operations, through the use of business analysis frameworks and related networks that link these aspects of the enterprise together. The Business Architect works to develop an integrated view of the business unit, in the context of the enterprise, using a repeatable approach, cohesive framework, and available industry standard techniques.

In some cases the focus of activity was the entire enterprise: the CEO view.  In others it was at the line of business or business unit level.  In all cases the focus was very much on the business issues:

  • Strategy
  • Business goals, objectives and drivers
  • Business operating model
  • Organization structure
  • Functions, roles, actors
  • Business processes
  • Key data elements

Being able to see the big picture and have the ability to communicate with key stakeholders was emphasized time and again.

  • Make it relevant and “makes sense” to senior management, operations and IT groups.  Visualize problems; have a way to communicate with the business team
  • Be able to relate – what big decision we need to make and to package it up so that execs can make a decision
  • The only person who cares about the whole picture is the CEO.  BA provides the CEO with a one page picture of the whole enterprise in a logical fashion
  • Show the CEO where impact is on a page – give confidence – control.  Help him make decisions around priorities.
  • The secret of good architecture is taking all the complexity and presenting it in a simplistic way that anyone can understand on a ‘need to know’ basis and quickly find the right answer to the current and/or planned state of business components.
  • BA facilitates strategic consistency with the business.  Where do we need to differentiate more than others?  How do we build in once or move to one instance?
  • Drive prioritization of when to invest based on the businesses strategic goals
  • Distil, communicate and relate to a business person
  • A key purpose of this new business driven architecture is to provide the means for communicating and controlling the strategic and operational intentions of the business in a way that is easy to understand for everyone in the organization

A common feature in the feedback is that underneath the models the information is rich – enables drill down – traceability to underlying requirements linked to the requirements.

Two areas of activity stood out the most: Capabilities and Value Streams.  Both of these are focused on WHAT a company needs to be able to do to execute its business strategy and to bring a product or service to a consumer.  Comments included:

  • Capabilities – combination of people, process and technology to deliver product features
  • Logical building blocks – gather information and compare the level of maturity in each capability, compare with others, understand where could we go to
  • Define/ champion 1 common reference model / capability model / logical building blocks of the enterprise.
  • Establish Capability, Information maps, Value Streams, stages and business processes.
  • Have intimate knowledge of the Business Capability (As Is/To Be), Business Component Structure, Business Processes, Value Streams and Conceptual Business Models.
  • Have the capability picture
  • … not only the capability of each component but also the relationship between components from every appropriate perspective (purpose, technical, compliance, risk, acceptability, etc.)
  • The Business Architecture is the first stage in a broader EA initiative.  Subsequent phases will align capabilities to applications and look at the major data flows between those applications

Since value stream mapping is a lean manufacturing technique, lean techniques are also called out as being relevant to business architecture because they identify areas of waste, which often change work processes or procedures, which may or may not impact applications and technology.  Feedback included:

  • Each value steam has Inputs (that triggers the value stream) and Outputs (the value based result of completing the business activities).
  • Each value stream is designed against Critical Success Factors, founded on the strategic intentions and priorities of the business, that represent the required business performance with Time, Cost, Quality, Risk and Compliance.
    • Time – How long the process should take from a Customer Perspective
    • Cost – How much the process should cost, measured using for example TDABC (Time Driven Activity Based Costing)
    • Quality – A statement clearly describing the (fit for) purpose of the activity
    • Risk – The protected acceptable residual risk involved due to effective control within the proposed design
    • Compliance – The specific interpreted requirements placed on the activity by interpreting the obligations of associated legislation and regulations.
    • Value streams are directed or informed by policies, plans, procedures, governance, regulations, business rules and other guidance, and are enabled by roles, IT Systems and other resources that will directly or indirectly support their completion.
    • The As-Is Architecture consists of the related value streams, indicating how the business is currently performing.   Under the facilitation of the business architect, design teams investigate how these can be improved to produce the Target State version of the Value Stream.

It was argued that displaying the relationship between the guidance, the enablers and the value streams, opens up the potential to discuss many things related to the business performance; that this alignment is critical for ensuring the business functions operate as expected; and that this is the major feature of business architecture and provides answers to so many previously unanswered questions for business managers.

Incidentally, since value stream maps are often drawn by hand in pencil (to keep the mapping process real-time, simple and iterative by allowing for simple correction) this tends to reinforce the comment by one of the consumer respondents that his most useful tools are pencil and paper.

The role and relationship of Business Architects, Business Analysts and other folk that might come under the general heading of Enterprise Architecture, varied from one organization to another, often seemingly dependent upon the size of the consulting firm.  At different ends of the spectrum were:

  • To a greater or lesser extent, Business Architects are supported by Business Analysts (“the knowledge processing factory) and by people with deep skills in design and process, Lean, 6 Sigma, HR, organization design and training.  The Business Architects ensure that all of the pieces fit together in a logical manor and that the impact can be shown in dollar terms
  • The Enterprise Architect is a person who can perform as both Solution Architect (SA) and a Business Architect (as needed) and has some ability as an Information Architect. In addition, an EA can perform at an enterprise level, something that is NOT required of either an SA or BA

The feedback on the title of Enterprise Architect was as varied as the number of responses.  The comments included:

  • Enterprise Architecture seen as a bad word
  • With hindsight, referring to it as architecture was a mistake
  • Enterprise Architecture is an IT version of technical specifications and drawings and not architecture, as such, and Enterprise Architects are mainly focused on the Application and Technology areas.
  • I think the technology story wave is coming to an end.  The focus will be more on the BusArch and InfoArch as that is where, in my view, the business IP sits. In the future more Bus/Info architects will become Enterprise WIDE architects, not so much enterprise architects

In most cases but not all, there is no such job as an Enterprise Architect.  It is in instead the overall term for Business Architects, Solution Architects, Information Architects, Value architects, Journey architects and so on.

The key differences that were highlighted between the roles of Business Architect and Enterprise Architect was a matter of depth and potentially also of education:

  • Enterprise Architects will tend to have more depth in technology; Business Architects will tend to have more depth in business techniques
  • Enterprise Architects will tend to have a Computer Science degree, or similar; Business Architects will tend to have a business degree or experience.

It was also stated that Business Architecture is a logical growth path for an experienced Business Analyst provided they get an Enterprise level understanding of the Business and Architecture.

When I actually look at the background of the respondents, I can see experience in:

  • IT consulting
  • Operations management
  • Product management
  • Project management
  • Business Analyst
  • Aeronautical Engineering
  • Logistics
  • … and much more besides

and education backgrounds are similarly varied.

The common theme is a deep interest in the business issues and what makes organizations work.

The evolution of Business Architecture clearly has a long way to go and depends upon the ability of the practitioners to relate to the business leaders.  One respondent predicted a shift and a segmentation in these comments:

  • For business that serve the “mum and dads”. I believe you will see a grouping of the different architectures based upon the business objectives and capabilities.
  • I think the technology story wave is coming to an end.  The focus will be more on the BusArch and InfoArch as that is where, in my view, the business IP sits. Applications and Technologies are all COTS nowadays (unless you are developing them). I think in the future more Bus/Info architects will become Enterprise WIDE Architects, not so much Enterprise Architects

The last word goes to the feedback that one Business Architect reported:

“In my time with this amazing new methodology I have had two separate reactions that stand out:

The first from an Acting CEO that was one of the biggest sceptics when I started the initiative and in admitting he had been, said that he owed me a big apology that he found the Business Architecture to be both highly useful and quite remarkable.

The second was in relation to a BPO initiative for a long standing traditional finance industry organization, when the chairman of the board said it [Business Architecture] had made a major decision relatively easy, that would have otherwise been one of the most difficult in the company‘s history.”

Allen Brown

Allen Brown is President and CEO, The Open Group – a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through IT standards.  For over 14 years Allen has been responsible for driving The Open Group’s strategic plan and day-to-day operations, including extending its reach into new global markets, such as China, the Middle East, South Africa and India. In addition, he was instrumental in the creation of the AEA, which was formed to increase job opportunities for all of its members and elevate their market value by advancing professional excellence.

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by | May 15, 2013 · 9:45 AM

The Open Group Certified Architect (Open CA) Program Transformed My Career

By Bala Prasad Peddigari, Tata Consultancy Services Limited

openca

Learning has been a continuous journey for me throughout my career, but certification in TOGAF® truly benchmarked my knowledge and Open CA qualified my capability as a practitioner. Open CA not only tested my skills as a practitioner, but also gave me valuable recognition and respect as an Enterprise Architect within my organization.

When I was nominated to undergo the Open CA Certification in 2010, I didn’t realize that this certification would transform my career, improve my architecture maturity and provide me with the such wide spread peer recognition.

The Open CA certification has enabled me to gain increased recognition at my organization. Furthermore, our internal leadership recognizes my abilities and has helped me to get into elite panels of jury regarding key initiatives at the organization level and at my parent company’s organization level. The Open CA certification has helped me to improve my Architecture Maturity and drive enterprise solutions.

With recognition, comes a greater responsibility – hence my attempt to create a community of architects to within my organization and expand the Enterprise Architecture culture. I started the Architects Cool Community a year ago. Today, this community has grown to roughly 350 associates who continuously share knowledge, come together to solve architecture problems, share best practices and contribute to The Open Group Working Groups to build reference architectures.

I can without a doubt state that TOGAF and Open CA have made a difference in my career transformation: they created organization-wide visibility, helped me to get both internal and external recognition as an Enterprise Architect and helped me to achieve required growth. My Open CA certification has also been well received by customers, particularly when I meet enterprise customers from Australia and the U.S. The Open CA certification exemplifies solid practitioner knowledge and large-scale end-to-end thinking. The certification also provided me with self-confidence in architecture problem solving to drive the right rationale.

I would like to thank my leadership team, who provided the platform and offered lot of support to drive the architecture initiatives. I would like to thank The Open Group’s Open CA team and the board who interviewed me to measure and certify my skills. I strongly believe you earn the certification because you are able to support your claims to satisfy the conformance requirements and achieving it proves that you have the skills and capabilities to carry out architecture work.

You can find out if you can meet the requirements of the program by completing the Open CA Self Assessment Tool.

balaBala Prasad Peddigari (Bala) is an Enterprise Architect and Business Value Consultant with Tata Consultancy Services Limited. Bala specializes in Enterprise Architecture, IT Strategies, Business Value consulting, Cloud based technology solutions and Scalable architectures. Bala has been instrumental in delivering IT Solutions for Finance, Insurance, Telecom and HiTech verticals. Bala currently heads the HiTech Innovative Solutions Technology Excellence Group with a focus on Cloud, Microsoft, Social Computing, Java and Open source technologies. He received accolades in Microsoft Tech Ed for his cloud architectural strengths and Won the Microsoft ALM Challenge. Bala published his papers in IEEE and regular speaker in Open Group conference and Microsoft events. Bala serves on the Open CA Certification Board for The Open Group.

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by | May 14, 2013 · 10:45 AM

The Open Group Sydney – My Conference Highlights

By Mac Lemon, MD Australia at Enterprise Architects

Sydney

Well the dust has settled now with the conclusion of The Open Group ‘Enterprise Transformation’ Conference held in Sydney, Australia for the first time on April 15-20. Enterprise Architects is proud to have been recognised at the event by The Open Group as being pivotal in the success of this event. A number of our clients including NBN, Australia Post, QGC, RIO and Westpac presented excellent papers on leading edge approaches in strategy and architecture and a number of EA’s own thought leaders in Craig Martin, Christine Stephenson and Ana Kukec also delivered widely acclaimed papers.

Attendance at the conference was impressive and demonstrated that there is substantial appetite for a dedicated event focussed on the challenges of business and technology strategy and architecture. We saw many international visitors both as delegates and presenting papers and there is no question that a 2014 Open Group Forum will be the stand out event in the calendar for business and technology strategy and architecture professionals.

My top 10 take-outs from the conference include the following:

  1. The universal maturing in understanding the criticality of Business Architecture and the total convergence upon Business Capability Modelling as a cornerstone of business architecture;
  2. The improving appreciation of techniques for understanding and expressing business strategy and motivation, such as strategy maps, business model canvass and business motivation modelling;
  3. That customer experience is emerging as a common driver for many transformation initiatives;
  4. While the process for establishing the case and roadmap for transformation appears well enough understood, the process for management of the blueprint through transformation is not and generally remains a major program risk;
  5. Then next version of TOGAF® should offer material uplift in support for security architecture which otherwise remains at low levels of maturity from a framework standardisation perspective;
  6. ArchiMate® is generating real interest as a preferred enterprise architecture modelling notation – and that stronger alignment of ArchiMate® and TOGAF® meta models in then next version of TOGAF® is highly anticipated;
  7. There is industry demand for recognised certification of architects to demonstrate learning alongside experience as the mark of a good architect. There remains an unsatisfied requirement for certification that falls in the gap between TOGAF® and the Open CA certification;
  8. Australia can be proud of its position in having the second highest per capita TOGAF® certification globally behind the Netherlands;
  9. While the topic of interoperability in government revealed many battle scarred veterans convinced of the hopelessness of the cause – there remain an equal number of campaigners willing to tackle the challenge and their free and frank exchange of views was entertaining enough to justify worth the price of a conference ticket;
  10. Unashamedly – Enterprise Architects remains in a league of its own in the concentration of strategy and architecture thought leadership in Australia – if not globally.

Mac LemonMac Lemon is the Managing Director of Enterprise Architects Pty Ltd and is based in Melbourne, Australia.

This is an extract from Mac’s recent blog post on the Enterprise Architects web site which you can view here.

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by | April 30, 2013 · 6:58 AM

What is Business Architecture?

By Allen Brown, President and CEO, The Open Group

I have heard and read the opinions of a number of people about what is Business Architecture, as I am sure many of us have but I wanted to understand it from the perspective of people who actually had Business Architect in their job title.  So I wrote to 183 people in Australia and New Zealand and asked them.

I chose Australia and New Zealand because of our conference in Sydney that was coming up at the time.  It is also worth mentioning that when counting the number of individuals in each country who have achieved TOGAF®9 certification, Australia is ranked 4th in the world and New Zealand is 20th.

I explained that I had thought of constructing a survey instrument but I always think that such an approach is only really suitable when you want to measure opinion on things that you know.  Since I really wanted to have an open mind, I asked everyone for their thoughts and provided a small number of open questions that showed the sort of thing I was interested in learning.

These were:

  • What is Business Architecture in the context of your organization?
  • Do you have Enterprise Architects in your organization? If so, what is it that you do that they do not? If not, how do you see Business Architecture differently from Enterprise Architecture?
  • Who do you report to? Is your line of reporting up to the CIO, the COO if you have one, or other senior level person?
  • How is Business Architecture perceived in your organization?

 It would also help me if I knew something about your organization.
  • Which industry are you in? e.g. IT, Oil, Finance, Healthcare, National or Local Government, etc.?
  • Is your organization primarily a consumer of Business Architecture or a supplier? e.g. consultant, trainer, vendor etc.
  • What type of organization do you work in? e.g. a for-profit entity, a government department, a charity, etc.
  • How big is the organization? Some idea of revenue or budget, number of employees – doesn’t have to be precise. You could just say small, medium or large.
  • How many Business Architects, Enterprise Architects or other architects are there in your organization?

And perhaps a little about yourself.
  • Your background e.g. Operations, Business Analysis, Project Management, IT, Finance etc.
  • Were you recruited for the role or did you develop into it?
  • I don’t wish to take up too much of your time but anything you can share would be very helpful. And please feel free to add anything else that you feel is relevant.

I have so far received 24 responses which is what I was hoping for but I am open to any other views people who are performing this role might have.  16 of the responses came from people employed by organizations that I think of as consumers of IT products and services (government departments, telcos, banks, accountants, energy companies, and mutuals) and 8 came from suppliers.

The responses were amazing and thank you to everyone who took the time to do so.  They included some wonderful insights into their role and into their organization, without of course divulging anything that they should not have.  But of course because I asked open questions, the responses are, at the same time both more complex and more interesting.  It’s a case of be careful of what you wish for – but I am really glad that I did.

So far I have been able to summarize the views of the consumers.  I will turn to the suppliers next.  It will be really interesting to see where the similarities and variations lay.

It is important to note that I am still in the process of seeking to understand, so I would be really pleased to hear from anyone who has such a role, to correct any misunderstandings I might have or erroneous conclusions I may have drawn.

A number of comments jumped out at me.  One example came from a Business Architect in a government department.  The reason it stood out was very simple.  Many times I am told that Business Architecture only applies to commercial business and cannot apply to governments or non-profits.  Which is strange to me, since I lead a non-profit and when I was at business school, part-time of course, a good proportion of my classmates were from the public sector.  The comment was in response to the question: who do you report to?  The answer was, “we report to the Secretary but all reporting lines are business focused”.

The first level of analysis, which should come as no surprise is that Business Architecture is a relatively new discipline for most organizations: in most cases it has been around for between 1 and 5 years.  Described by some as a growing capability, or as immature, or even as “largely missing”.  One respondent describes herself quite rightly as a pioneer.

A recurring theme was that the ability to have a company-wide or industry-wide model was critical as it provides a common terminology across the board to what the organization actually does and enables understanding of the implications of any changes.  Another was that the success or lack of it in Business Architecture really came down to the expertise of the people in the team; and another was that Business Architects acted very much, like internal consultants and often had a consulting background.

What Business Architects do is exactly that – their focus is on the “What”.  Some of the comments included:

  • Understanding strategic themes and drivers
  • Modeling value chains, value streams, configurations
  • Context modeling e.g. external interactions
  • Capabilities, including business capability, service capability (including both business and IT capabilities), capability maturity, targets and gaps
  • Calling out the interdependencies of all the business and architecture domains: strategy, governance, market, distribution, product, capability
  • Design – entities, people (organization structure, incentives), process, systems, functions, roles
  • Linking with and supporting the strategy and injecting into the investment planning cycle
  • The Business Architect provides processes, part of the input and information for the business to determine whether or not any investment will be made within their organisation

The “How” is in the domain of the Solution Architects, Application, Data and Technology Architects and the Business Analysts: business, process and data.

The crucial element is how well the Business Architects are integrated with the other architects and with the analysts.  In many cases Business Architecture was within the Enterprise Architecture function – as an aside it was pointed out by one or two respondents that they considered Enterprise Architecture as a function rather than a person – in other cases it was not.

The reporting lines for Business Architects varies from organization to organization.  Some reporting lines ultimately end up with the CIO or CTO, others to the COO and others did not.  In many cases they reported directly to a GM or Head of change management, transformation or business strategy or improvement.

In those cases where Business Architecture was not embedded within the Enterprise Architecture function the relationship was enabled via a forum or committee that brought the Business Architects together with those working on the other disciplines.   Gaining agreement on a common content framework, on business modeling standards and on governance procedures were cited as approaches that supported the collaboration.

Although in one case, Business Architecture was relegated to a sub-discipline of IT architecture to focus on the “business stuff”.  In most cases the Business Architects described a differentiated focus or role.

  • A focus on business performance, process design, organization design, strategy and planning
  • The documentation and governance of business processes, organizational elements, business requirements, regulatory requirements, business rules and risks
  • The description of what we are trying to do, what value it adds and how it can be done

The difference from the other architecture domains was often described under the general heading of technology.

  • Technical architecture and governance
  • Strategic solutioning
  • Information, application, data architecture
  • Portfolio management
  • The enterprise stack of tools
  • Innovation through new technology

Business Architecture often demands a certain amount of analysis work and in one case it was seen as glorified business analysis. I have also heard “industry experts” say that they do not understand the difference between Business Architects and Business Analysts.  But that is unfair both to the Business Architects and to the Business Analysts.  They are both important functions in their own right.  In fact it has been emphasized that you need all three disciplines: Business Analyst, Business Architect and the Solution, Information, Technology Architect.

Perhaps in smaller organizations you might get by with a Jack of all trades but the size of the organization represented by these respondents ranged from 1,500 employees to 50,000 employees and they need the benefit of the three different specializations.

While the Business Analysts are the source of the very detailed information needed, the Business Architect brings the skills needed to distil that information and discuss it with the business leaders.  The people they are talking with are the senior leaders, the strategic solutioning teams, the program directors of large change programs and others who need pragmatic, easily digestible information.  They need to understand the implications and gaps, the dependencies, the opportunities and the limitations.

As one person said, “the success gauge for Business Architecture is an organization that starts solving business problems by defining them within the organization’s context across the spectrum of change areas, minus the technology change area, and then works toward the technology, rather than starting at a technology solution that might solve the problem and playing catch-up from there.  I continue to hold to the view that investing in the Business Architecture up front saves on people, process and technology cost at the end.”

Again, I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to respond.  Everyone has a valuable story to tell and everyone is fully committed to the role and function of the Business Architect.  If I have misunderstood anything, please do not hesitate to correct me. I look forward to hearing your comments.

Allen Brown

Allen Brown is President and CEO, The Open Group – a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through IT standards.  For over 14 years Allen has been responsible for driving The Open Group’s strategic plan and day-to-day operations, including extending its reach into new global markets, such as China, the Middle East, South Africa and India. In addition, he was instrumental in the creation of the AEA, which was formed to increase job opportunities for all of its members and elevate their market value by advancing professional excellence.

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by | August 8, 2012 · 3:30 AM

ArchiMate 2.0 – Ready for the Future of Enterprise Architecture!

By Henry Franken, BIZZdesign

Models have played an important role in business for a long time. Process models, information- and data models, application landscapes, strategic models, operational models – you name it, organizations have tried it. With the rise of Enterprise Architecture (EA) as a strategic discipline for many organizations, we saw two interesting developments. First of all, organizations try to connect their models, to gain insight in the way the enterprise works from many different perspectives. Secondly, we saw the trend that models become more high-level, focusing on the essence of the organization.

These developments have led to the development of the ArchiMate® language, which allows high-level modeling within a domain, but allows modeling the relations between domains. Even more, in recognition that architecture is a communications game, a key driver for the language was to also allow for effective visualizations for key stakeholders based on solid architectural analyses.

The first edition of the ArchiMate language enabled organizations to create holistic architecture models with concepts from three domains: business, application and technology. With a handful of concepts and relations, this allowed organizations to model the relation between products and services, processes, supporting applications and information, as well as infrastructure. Having modeled this formally, organizations can do impact assessments, generate visualizations for various stakeholders and so on.

ArchiMate has recently been extended by members within the ArchiMate Forum within The Open Group), resulting in ArchiMate 2.0 – a new version of ArchiMate that is fully aligned with The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF®). Two new extensions have been developed for this purpose, making sure the language now covers the entire Architecture Development Method (ADM) of TOGAF.

The new motivation extension allows organizations to graphically model the answer to the “why” question of EA: Who are key stakeholders of EA? What are their drivers? How do these drivers lead to principles and requirements that are realized in the architecture? This extension mainly aligns with the early phases of the TOGAF ADM.

The new ArchiMate 2.0 standard also has an implementation and migration extension that aligns with the later phases of the ADM. Using this extension, architects can align with project management and graphically model plateaus, projects and programs, as well as their deliverables.

One of the key strengths of ArchiMate – as well as TOGAF – is its openness – it allows practitioners worldwide to join in and help push the language forward. Indeed, we are seeing the adoption of the language, as well as certifications of practitioners grow worldwide.

The Open Group has introduced certification programs for individuals, training vendors and tool vendors, and the uptake of these programs is very successful! We are now seeing many individuals obtaining an ArchiMate 2.0 certificate, training vendors applying for training accreditation, and tool vendors implementing the ArchiMate modeling language into Enterprise Architecture modeling tools, all while  being certified by The Open Group.

With all these great developments within the last few years – fluent integration with TOGAF and a fast growing number of professionals using ArchiMate – I believe it is safe to say that with ArchiMate 2.0 you are ready for the future of Enterprise Architecture!

Henry Franken is the managing director of BiZZdesign and is chair of The Open Group ArchiMate Forum. As chair of The Open Group ArchiMate Forum, Henry led the development of the ArchiMate Version 2.o standard. Henry is a speaker at many conferences and has co-authored several international publications and Open Group White Papers. Henry is co-founder of the BPM-Forum. At BiZZdesign, Henry is responsible for research and innovation.

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by | August 1, 2012 · 9:45 AM

Video Highlights Day 2 of Washington, D.C.

By The Open Group Conference Team

How can you use the tools of Enterprise Architecture and open standards to improve the capability of your company doing business? The Day 2 speakers of The Open Group Conference in Washington, D.C. addressed this question, focusing on Enterprise Transformation. Sessions included:

  • “Case Study: University Health Network (Toronto),” by Jason Uppal, chief enterprise architect at QR Systems, Inc. and winner of the 2012 Edison Award for Innovation
  • “Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™): Transforming the DoD Avionics Software Industry Through the Use of Open Standards,” by Judy Cerenzia, FACE™ program director at The Open Group, Kirk Avery, chief software architect at Lockheed Martin and Philip Minor, director at System of Systems of Engineering Directorate at the Office of Chief Systems Engineer, ASA(ALT)
  • “Using the TOGAF® Architecture Content Framework with the ArchiMate® Modeling Language,” by Henry Franken, CEO of BIZZdesign, and Iver Band, enterprise architect at Standard Insurance

David Lounsbury, CTO of The Open Group summarizes some of the day’s sessions:

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by | July 25, 2012 · 1:56 PM

Apple Registers Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion to the UNIX® 03 Standard

By Andrew Josey, The Open Group

Today, Apple, Inc. released the latest version of the Mac OS X, version 10.8, also known as “Mountain Lion.” In addition to the product’s release, we are pleased to announce that Mac OS X Mountain Lion has achieved certification to The Open Group UNIX® 03 standard, which is the mark for systems conforming to the Single UNIX Specification, Version 3.

The Single UNIX Specification is an open specification that defines the set of required interfaces for a conformant UNIX system. Support for the Single UNIX Specification permits wide portability of applications between compliant and compatible operating systems. High reliability, availability and scalability are all attributes associated with certified UNIX® systems. By registering operating systems as compliant with the Single UNIX Specification, UNIX system suppliers assure their users of the stability, application portability and interoperability of their products.

Over the years, Apple has been a great supporter of the UNIX standard, and today, Mac OS X is the most widely used UNIX desktop operating system. Apple’s installed base—over 50 million users— and commitment to the UNIX standard as a platform is significant to the UNIX certification program. We look forward to continuing to work with Apple and our other UNIX partners in promoting open and interoperable operating systems as the specification continues to evolve.

Andrew Josey is Director of Standards within The Open Group. He is currently managing the standards process for The Open Group, and has recently led the standards development projects for TOGAF 9.1, ArchiMate 2.0, IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (POSIX), and the core specifications of the Single UNIX Specification, Version 4. Previously, he has led the development and operation of many of The Open Group certification development projects, including industry-wide certification programs for the UNIX system, the Linux Standard Base, TOGAF, and IEEE POSIX. He is a member of the IEEE, USENIX, UKUUG, and the Association of Enterprise Architects.

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by | July 20, 2012 · 10:39 AM

TOGAF® 9 Certification Growth – Number of Individuals Certified Doubles in the Last 12 Months – Now Over 14,800

By Andrew Josey, The Open Group

The number of individuals certified in the TOGAF® 9 certification program as of July 1st 2012 is 14,851. This represents a doubling of the number of individuals certified in the last 12 months with 7,640 new certifications during that period. The latest statistics show that certifications are now growing at two thousand individuals per quarter.

TOGAF is being adopted globally. The top five countries include the UK, Netherlands, USA, Australia and India.

Here is a list of individuals certifications among the top 20 countries, as of July 2012

Rank # Individuals Country Percentage
1 2444 UK 16.2
2 1916 USA 12.8
3 1607 Netherlands 10.8
4 1093 Australia 7.3
5 913 India 6.1
6 705 Canada 4.7
7 637 South Africa 4.2
8 524 Finland 3.5
9 517 France 3.4
10 434 China 2.8
11 379 Norway 2.5%
12 344 Sweden 2.3%
13 280 Germany 1.8%
14 271 Belgium 1.8%
15 244 United Arab Emirates 1.6%
16 224 Denmark 1.5%
17 209 Japan 1.4%
18 176 New Zealand 1.1%
19 173 Saudi Arabia 1.1%
20 136 Czech Republic 0.9%

There are 43 TOGAF 9 training partners worldwide and 48 accredited TOGAF 9 courses.  More information on TOGAF 9 Certification, including the official accredited training course calendar and a directory of certified people and, can be found on The Open Group website at: http://www.opengroup.org/togaf9/cert/.

(This blog post was edited on August 16)

Andrew Josey is Director of Standards within The Open Group. He is currently managing the standards process for The Open Group, and has recently led the standards development projects for TOGAF 9.1, ArchiMate 2.0, IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (POSIX), and the core specifications of the Single UNIX Specification, Version 4. Previously, he has led the development and operation of many of The Open Group certification development projects, including industry-wide certification programs for the UNIX system, the Linux Standard Base, TOGAF, and IEEE POSIX. He is a member of the IEEE, USENIX, UKUUG, and the Association of Enterprise Architects.

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by | May 21, 2012 · 10:15 AM

Open CA Candidate Profile: An Interview with Andrey Zaychikov

By Steve Philp, The Open Group

Andrey Zaychikov is CIO and Chief Enterprise Architect Ministry of Sport, Tourism and Youth Policy for the Russian Federation

In February 2012, Andrey Zaychikov became the first Russian to go through the Open CA program via the direct route. He flew to London Heathrow from Moscow to attend the certification board at a local hotel near Heathrow airport and successfully achieved Master Open CA status. We asked him why he wanted to get Open CA certified and how he found the process.

Can you tell us something about yourself in terms of your background and career to date?

I started my career as a software developer with a Master’s degree in computer science and more than five years experience in creating applications using C, C++ and .NET. In those days I was eager to understand how to define the solution requirements and design its implementation, how to deal with the risks, how to organize the communication with customers in a most effective manner. I applied different approaches based on Booch-2 (in early days), then UML etc. They were quite effective (of course, if adopted to the needs of the particular projects and being common-sense) especially talking about small or medium silo applications.

In 2007, I was put in charge of a huge project involving more than 300 organizations within the enterprise and affecting 80 percent of its operational activities. The enormous complexity of this project forced me to look for the other ways to handle it. I found out that enterprise architecture was the only solution to deal with that issue. That was the start of my career as an Enterprise Architect.

Why did you decide to go for Open CA certification?

On the one hand, I had some problems with the quality of assessment of my professional skills and assessment of my approach to defining and governing enterprise architectures, and on the other hand it was a real chance to demonstrate the level of my personal skills and acquirement to the customers, employees, colleagues and competitors.  Besides, it is a good line in a CV to refer to and it will help to boost my career.

Why is Open CA different from other IT certifications that you have previously been involved with?

I chose Open CA Certification Program because it is:

  • Really vendor, country and methods neutral
  • Based on best practices
  • A great challenge to succeed as an Enterprise Architect
  • A unique chance to assess one’s personal skills and acquirement against the world’s best professionals
  • It is linked to a certified professional and not to a company
  • It helps to determine one’s strengths and weaknesses
  • It is instrumental in building one’s personal development and educational plan
  • It is one of the most prestigious enterprise architecture certifications.

In fact, as I thought, it could really help me to define my place in the world of enterprise architecture and to look at myself from another point of view. It helps not only to assess one’s methodological, technical or business skills but also to assess one’s common approach to work in the terms of enterprise architecture.

How did you prepare for Open CA certification?

My preparation was organized in a step-by-step manner.  First of all, I read the Conformance Requirements and a sample package in order to understand what I should do at the first stage of the certification. I used a  self-assessment tool at this stage as well. Then, I completed the experience profiles because it seemed to me to be far easier to write the profiles rather than the questions section first. I wrote the experience profiles in Russian, my native language and then translated them into English. Therefore, it took me approximately twice as much time as estimated by the Certification Board.

Then I answered the questions in the sections. This time I did not translate them – I just wrote the responses straight in English.

After that I did several reviews of my package in order to squeeze it into 50 pages, simplified some responses and diagrams.

While reviewing my package I tried to conform my package with the requirements and made every response clear to the people who are not aware of the current vertical industry and specific project situation. I watched some sitcoms and read a lot of fiction in English for language practice since I did not use English at work.

Having received the review of my package from The Open Group, I made some minor changes in order to clear up some issues.

Then I began preparation for the interview. I read carefully the certification board member handbook to figure out what the Board might be interested in during the interview. I reviewed my package again trying to ask myself as many questions as I could and answered them mentally, in other words, I tried being in interviewers’ shoes.

Then, taking into consideration the time left before the interview, I chose the most important questions and answered only them in English.

Two days before the interview I read thoroughly my package and the questions again. I arrived to London two days before the interview, again in order to practice the language a bit and not to have the linguistic shock.

What benefits do you think having this certification will bring you?

Despite of the fact that the Open CA certification program is not really well known in Russia, it has already brought me some recognition at Russian IT market, especially among vendors as an excellent and unique specialist. Besides, it really helped me to interact with international community. I think it will speed up my career as a CIO and EA in the near future.

What are your plans for future certifications?

I am planning to progress to Open CA Level 3 in a couple of years. I am thinking over PMBOK certification as well, as I often had to fulfill the role of the project manager in some large projects. Plus, I would like to take TOGAF 9 Certification as my TOGAF 8.1.1 has expired and I am going to continue working on my PhD.

Steve Philp is the Marketing Director for the Open CA and Open CITS certification programs at The Open Group. Over the past 20 years, Steve has worked predominantly in sales, marketing and general management roles within the IT training industry. Based in Reading, UK, he joined the Open Group in 2008 to promote and develop the organization’s skills and experience-based IT certifications.

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by | February 2, 2012 · 1:09 PM

San Francisco Conference Day 2 – Enterprise Transformation: The New Role of Open Standards

By The Open Group Conference Team

The Open Group Conference in San Francisco has brought together a plenary of speakers from across the globe and disciplines. While their perspective on enterprise architecture is different, most seem to agree that enterprise transformation is gaining momentum within the enterprise architecture community. During Day Two of the Conference in San Francisco, a number of speakers continued the discussion and the role that standards play in the process of fundamentally changing the enterprise.

The New Role of Open Standards

Allen Brown, President and CEO of The Open Group set the tone for the day during his opening address, providing an overview of enterprise transformation and the role that enterprise architecture and open standards have in shaping the future.

“It’s a journey, not an event,” stated Brown. He also reinforced that enterprise transformation in not just about reducing costs – it’s about improving capabilities, functionality and communication.

In addition to highlighting the tremendous accomplishments of its over 400 member organizations, Brown showcased a number of case studies from a wide range of global enterprises who are leveraging enterprise architecture (EA). For example:

  • University Health Network in Ontario is utilizing EA as a solution for improving the quality of healthcare without increasing the cost
  • Caja Madrid relies on EA to improve the bank’s capabilities while reducing its vulnerabilities and the cost of those vulnerabilities
  • SASOL, an integrated energy company in South Africa, is utilizing EA to improve the organization’s function while reducing cost
  • Cisco is utilizing EA as it provides a common language for cross functional communication

Brown also mentioned the release of a new open standard from the FACE Consortium, which is transforming the avionics industry. According to Capt. Tracy Barkhimer, program manager for the Air Combat Electronics Program Office (PMA-209), the new standard “is quite possibly the most important innovation in Naval aviation since computers were first incorporated into airplanes. This will truly pave the way for the future.”

An Architecture –based Approach

The next plenary speaker was Bill Rouse, the Executive Director of Tennenbaum Institute at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a professor in the College of Computing and School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. His research focuses on understanding and managing complex public-private systems such as healthcare, energy and defense, with emphasis on mathematical and computational modeling of these systems for the purpose of policy design and analysis.

Rouse posed the notion: you can be the innovator or the transformer.

Of course all businesses want to be the former. So how is architecture involved? According to Rouse, architectures are transformative by nature by providing evidence-based decision making by looking at an enterprise’s operational systems, technical levels and socio-technical architectures. However, as he pointed out: “You have to being willing to change.”

Building a Roadmap to Solve the Problem

Tim Barnes, Chief Architect at Devon Energy, one of North America’s leading independent producers of oil and natural gas, shared his hands-on experience with enterprise architecture and the keys to the company’s success. After the company experienced a profound growth between 1998 and 2010, the company needed to simplify its system to eliminate berries that were impacting business growth and driving excessive IT costs. Barnes was chartered by Devon to develop an EA discipline for the company and leverage the EA process to reduce unnecessary complexity, help streamline the business and lower IT costs.

The Cyber Threat

Rounding out the lineup of plenary speakers was Joseph Menn, a renowned journalist in the area of cyber security and the author of Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet.

When it comes to cybercrime and security, “no one is telling us how bad it really is,” said Menn. After providing a few fear-provoking examples, and instilling that the Stuxnet affair is just a small example of things to come, Menn made it clear that government will only provide a certain level of protection – enterprises must take action to protect themselves and their intellectual property.

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by | August 10, 2011 · 12:05 AM

PODCAST: How the role of certification impacts professionalization of IT and skills management

By Dana Gardner, Interabor Solutions

Listen to this recorded podcast here: Architect Certification Increasingly Impacts Professionalization of IT in Cloud Era

The following is the transcript of a sponsored podcast panel discussion on certification and its impact on the professionalization of IT and skills management, in conjunction with the The Open Group Conference, Austin 2011.

Dana Gardner: Hi, this is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you’re listening to BriefingsDirect. Today, we present a sponsored podcast discussion in conjunction with The Open Group Conference in Austin, Texas, the week of July 18, 2011. We’ve assembled a panel to update us on the impact and role of certifications for IT professionals. We’ll examine how certification for enterprise architects, business architects, and such industry initiatives as ArchiMate® are proving instrumental as IT organizations seek to reinvent themselves.

There are now a lot of shifts in skills and a lot of movement about how organizations should properly staff themselves. There have been cost pressures and certification issues for regulation and the adoption of new technologies. We’re going to look at how all these are impacting the role of certification out in the field. Here to help us better understand how an organization like The Open Group is alleviating the impact and importance of IT skills and role certification amid this churning change in the IT organizations is Steve Philp. He is the Marketing Director for Professional Certification at The Open Group. Welcome, Steve.

Steve Philp: Thank you.

Gardner: We are also here with Andrew Josey. He is Director of Standards at The Open Group. Welcome, Andrew.

Andrew Josey: Thank you, Dana.

Gardner: And we’re here with James de Raeve. He is Vice President of Certification at The Open Group. Hello, James.

James de Raeve: Thanks, Dana.

Gardner: Let’s start with you. As I said, we’re seeing a lot of change about many things in IT, but certainly how to properly staff, especially as you start to consider outsourcing options and Cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) types of options. Organizations are also looking at consolidation around their applications and infrastructure. So there’s quite a bit of change. Naturally, the people in the “people, processes, and technology” spectrum need to be addressed. From your perspective, why is there the need for more professionalization, or what are the trends that are driving the need to reexamine your staff and how to properly certify your IT leadership?

de Raeve: The primary driver here that we’re hearing from members and customers is that they need to get more out of the investments that they’re making — their payroll for their IT staff. They need to get more productivity. And that has a number of consequences.

Realizing talent

They want to ensure that the people they are employing and that they’re staffing their teams with are effective. They want to be sure that they’re not bringing in external experts when they don’t need to. So there is a need to realize the talent that they’ve actually got in their internal IT community and to develop that talent, nurture it, and exploit it for the benefit of the organization.

And professionalism, professionalization, and profession frameworks are all tools that can be used in identifying, measuring, and developing the talents and capabilities of your people. That seems to be the major driver.

Gardner: Steve, any further thoughts on the trends that are driving certification and professionalization issues?

Steve PhilpPhilp: Something I have noticed since joining The Open Group is that we’ve got some skills and experience-based certifications. They seem to be the things that people are particularly interested in, because it’s not just a test of your knowledge about a particular vendor or product, but how you have applied your skills and experience out there in the marketplace. They have proven to be very successful in helping people assess where they are and in working towards developing a career path. That’s one of the areas of certification that things are going to move more towards — more skills and experience-based certification programs in organizations.

Gardner: Where are we seeing this most in demand? Are there particular types of technology certification or professional role certification that are in the most demand? Where is this the most hot or impactful right now?

Philp: Looking at certification in general, you still have areas like Microsoft MCSE, Microsoft technical specialist, application development, and project management that are in demand, and things like CCNA from Cisco. But I’ve also noticed a lot more in the security field. CISSP and CCSA seem to be the ones that are always getting a lot of attention. In terms of security, the trends in mobile computing, cloud computing, means that security certification is a big growth area.

We’re just about to put a security track into our Certified IT Specialist Program at The Open Group, so there will be a skills and experience-based track for security practitioners soon.

Gardner: James, of course we should point out for our listeners that we’re not just talking about certification from vendors and suppliers about the specific products and/or platforms, but we’re really looking at a skill- and roles-based approach. Maybe you could help us distinguish between the two and why it’s important to do so?

de Raeve: The difference, as Steve alluded to, is that there is a whole world out there of technology and product-related certifications that are fulfilling a very important function in helping people establish and demonstrate their knowledge of those particular products and technologies.

But there is a need for people too in the building of teams and in the delivering of results to nurture and grow their people to be team players and team participants and to be able to work with them to function within the organization as, for want of a better term, “t-shaped people,” where there are a number of soft and people-related skills and potentially architecture related skills for the IT specialists, and skills and capabilities enable people to be rounded professionals within an organization.

T-shaped people

It’s that aspect that differentiates the professionalization and the profession-oriented certification programs that we’re operating here at The Open Group — The Open Certified Architect, The Open Certified IT Specialist. Those are t-shaped people and we think that makes a huge difference. It’s what’s going to enable organizations to be more effective by developing their people to have that more rounded t-shaped capability.

Gardner: Andrew, with the emphasis on standards and your role there, how does the impact of certification on the ability to adhere to and exploit standards come together? What’s the relationship between making sure you have standardization around your people and their skill sets, but also being able to exploit standardization and even more automation across your organization?

Josey: We see the certification as being the ultimate drive in the uptake of the standards, and so we’re able to go from not just having a standard on the shelf to actually seeing it being deployed in the field and used. We’ve actually got some people certification programs, such as TOGAF®, and we’ve got some over 20,000 practitioners now.

We’ve gone through the certification program and we’ve been using and evangelizing, TOGAF as a standard in the field and then feeding that back to our members and, through the association, the feedback improvements to the standards. So it’s very much part of the end-to-end ecosystem — developing a standard for deploying it, and getting people on it, and then getting the feedback in the right way.

Gardner: I suppose that as organizations want to create a level playing field, we’re starting to see calls for this type of certification in requests for proposal (RFPs) around projects. For folks on the buy side who are seeking either people or the suppliers themselves, a supply chain and ecosystem of providers, how much is certification playing a role and how they can pick and choose among each other with some sense of trust and reliability?

Philp: It’s very much an important part of the process now. TOGAF and IT Architect Certification (ITAC) have appeared in a number of RFPs for government and for major manufacturing organizations. So it’s important that the suppliers and the buyers recognize these programs.

Similarly with recruitment, you find that things like TOGAF will appear in most recruitment ads for architects. Certainly, people want knowledge of it, but more and more you’ll see TOGAF certification is required as well.

ITAC, which is now Open CA, has also appeared in a number of recruitment ads for members like Logica, Capgemini, Shell. More recently, organizations like the CBS, EADS, ADGA Group, Direct Energy have requested it. And the list goes on. It’s a measure of how important the awareness is for these certifications and that’s something we will continue to drive at The Open Group.

Gardner: All right, Steve, thanks for that. As you mentioned, there have been some changes in terms of the branding around some of these. Let’s take a quick review if we could around what’s being happening at the Austin Conference, but also what’s new and what’s been going on with the branding. Let’s look at the TOGAF, ArchiMate®, and business architecture certifications. What’s new and interesting there?

In development

Josey: I am speaking up on what we are doing in ArchiMate first, before I talk about TOGAF, and then Steve will tell us what the Business Forum is up to.

ArchiMate certification is something new that we’re developing right now. We haven’t deployed a certification program as yet. The previous certification program was under the ArchiMate Foundation, which was the body that developed ArchiMate, before it transferred into The Open Group.

We’re currently working on the new program which will be similar to some aspects of our TOGAF program, and it’ll be knowledge base certification with an assessment by exam and a practical assessment in which the candidate can actually do modeling. So this will be people certification and there will also be accredited training course certification.

And then also what we’re going to do there is actually to provide certification for tools. There will be certifications there.

That’s pretty much what we’re doing in ArchiMate, so we don’t have a firm timeline. So it will not be available it looks like, probably towards the end of the year would be the earliest, but possibly early next year.

Gardner: Knowing that we reach a wide audience, could you give a quick overview of what ArchiMate is for those who might not be familiar.

Josey: ArchiMate is a modeling language for enterprise architecture (EA) in general and specifically it’s a good fit for TOGAF. It’s a way of communicating and developing models for TOGAF EA. Originally it was developed by the Telematica Instituut and funded, I think, by the EU and a number of commercial companies in the Netherlands. It was actually brought into The Open Group in 2008 by the ArchiMate Foundation and is now managed by the ArchiMate Forum within The Open Group.

Gardner: Now we’re going to hear an update on TOGAF.

Josey: The latest version of TOGAF is TOGAF 9 for certification. As we mentioned earlier, there are two types of certification programs, skills and knowledge based. TOGAF falls into the knowledge based camp. We have two levels. TOGAF 9 Foundation, which is our level one, is for individuals to assess that they know the terminology and basic concepts of EA in TOGAF.

Level two, which is a superset of level one, in addition assesses analysis and comprehension. The idea is that some people who are interested in just getting familiar with TOGAF and those people who work around enterprise architects can go into TOGAF Foundation. And these enterprise architects themselves should initially start with the TOGAF Certified, the level two, and then perhaps move on later to Open CA. That will be helpful.

For TOGAF 9 Certification, we introduced that by midyear 2009. We launched TOGAF 9 in February, and it took a couple of months to just roll out all these certifications through all the exam channels. Since then, we’ve gone through 8,000 certifications (see June blog post). We’ve seen that two-thirds of those were at the higher level, level two, for EA practitioners and one-third of those are currently at the foundation level.

Gardner: And lastly, business architecture?

A new area

Philp: Business architecture is a new area that we’ve been working on. Let me just to go back to what we did on the branding, because it ties in with that. We launched The Open Group’s new website recently and we used that as the opportunity to re-brand ITAC as The Open Group Certified Architect (Open CA) program. The IT Specialist Certification (ITSC) has now become The Open Group Certified IT Specialist or Open CITS Program.

We did the rebranding at that time, because we wanted to be it associated with the word “open.” We wanted to give the skills and experience-based certification a closer linkage to The Open Group. That’s why we changed from ITAC to Open CA. But, we’ve not changed the actual program itself. Candidates still have to create a certification package and be interviewed by three board members, and there are still three levels of certification: Certified, Master, and Distinguished.

However, what we’re intending to do is have some core requirements that architects need to meet, and then add some specific specializations for different types of architects. The one that we’ve been working on the most recently is the Business Architecture Certification. This came about from an initiative about 18 months ago.

We formed something called the Business Forum with a number of Platinum Members who got involved with it –companies like IBM, HP, SAP, Oracle and Capgemini. We’ve been defining the conformance requirements for the business architecture certification. It’s going through the development process and hopefully will be launched sometime later this year or early next year.

Gardner: I’m interested in how this is making a difference in the field. There’s a lot of change going on this consolidation. There’s re-factoring of what’s core and what’s context in what IT department should focus on and, therefore, what their skill sets need to be. They’re adopting new technologies. I wonder if you have any examples of where we’ve seen certification come to play when an organization is looking to change its workforce. Any thoughts about some organizations and what the impact has been?

de Raeve: There’s a very good example of an organization that had exactly that problem, and they’ve done a presentation about this in one of our conferences. It’s Philips, and they used to have an IT workforce that was divided among the business units. The different businesses had their own IT function.

They changed that and went to a single IT function across the organization, providing services to the businesses. In doing so, they needed to rationalize things like grades, titles, job descriptions, and they were looking around for a framework within which they could do this and they evaluated a number of them.

They were working with a partner who wass helping them do this. The partner was an Open Group member and suggested they look at The Open Group’s IT Specialist Certification, the CITS Certification Program, as it provides a set of definitions for the capabilities and skills required for IT professionals. They picked it up and used it, because it covered the areas they were interested in.

This was sufficient and complete enough to be useful to them, and it was vendor-neutral, and an industry best practice. So they could pick this up and use it with confidence. And that has been very successful. They initially benchmarked their entire 900 strong IT workforce against The Open Group definition, so they could get to calibrate themselves, where their people were on their journey through development as professionals.

They’ve started to embrace the certification programs as a method of not only measuring their people, but also rewarding them. It’s had a very significant impact in terms of not only enabling them to get a handle upon their people, but also in terms of their employee engagement. In the engagement surveys that they do with their staff, some of the comments they got back after they started doing this process were, “For the first time we feel like management is paying attention to us.”

It was very positive feedback, and the net result is that they are well on their way to meeting their goal of no longer having automatically to bring in an external service provider whenever they were dealing with a new project or a new topic. They know that they’ve got people with sufficient expertise in-house on their own payroll now. They’ve been able to recognize that capability, and the use of it has had a very positive effect. So it’s a very strong good story.

I think that the slides will be available to our members in the conference’s proceedings from the London Conference in April. That will be worth something to look at.

Gardner: Where would you go for more information, if you were a practitioner, a budding enterprise architect and you wanted to certify yourself and/or if you were in an organization trying to determine more precisely what certification would mean to you as you’re trying to reengineer, modernize and right-size your organization? Where do you go for more information?

Philp: If you go to The Open Group website, http://www.opengroup.org/certifications, all of the people-based certifications are there, along with the benefits for individuals, benefits for organizations and various links to the appropriate literature. There’s also a lot of other useful things, like self-assessment tests, previous webinars, sample packages, etc. That will give you more of an idea of what’s required for certification along with the conformance requirements and other program documentation. There’s a lot of useful information on the website.

Gardner: Very good. We’ve been discussing how the role and impact of IT Certification is growing and some of the reasons for that. We’ve also looked at how organizations like The Open Group are elevating the role of certification and providing means to attain it and measure it the standard.

I’d like to thank our guests for delivering this sponsored podcast discussion in conjunction with The Open Group Conference in Austin, Texas, the week of July 18, 2011 We’ve been joined by our panel, Steve Philp, he is the Marketing Director for Professional Certification at the Open Group. Thank you, Steve.

Philp: Thank you, Dana.

Gardner: And we are also have been joined by by Andrew Josey, Director of Standards at The Open Group. Thank you, Andrew.

Josey: Thank you, Dana.

Gardner: And lastly, James de Raeve, he is the Vice President of Certification, once again at The Open Group. Thanks James.

de Raeve: Thank you, Dana, and thanks to everyone who has listened.

Gardner: Right. This is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Thanks for listening and come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com.

Copyright The Open Group 2011. All rights reserved.

Dana Gardner is the Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, which identifies and interprets the trends in Services-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and enterprise software infrastructure markets. Interarbor Solutions creates in-depth Web content and distributes it via BriefingsDirect™ blogs, podcasts and video-podcasts to support conversational education about SOA, software infrastructure, Enterprise 2.0, and application development and deployment strategies.

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by | July 15, 2011 · 12:05 AM

What’s in a name? A change of name for our ITAC and ITSC professional certifications

By Steve Philp, The Open Group

With the launch of the new Open Group website this week, we have taken the opportunity to rebrand our two skills- and experience-based certification programs. The IT Architect Certification (ITAC) program has now become The Open Group Certified Architect (Open CA) program. The IT Specialist Certification (ITSC) program has now become The Open Group Certified IT Specialist (Open CITS) program.

The new website (and our new logo for that matter) places much more emphasis on the word “Open”.  This is one of the reasons for us changing the names away from something that is not readily associated with The Open Group (i.e. ITAC) to something that is more recognizable as an Open Group certification, i.e. Open CA.  However, besides the name change, there hasn’t been any changes made to the way in which either program operates. For example, the Open CA program still requires candidates to submit a comprehensive certification package detailing their skills and experience gained on working on architecture-related projects, followed by a rigorous peer review process.

The Open CA program still currently focuses on IT-related work. However, the architecture profession is constantly evolving and to reflect this, The Open Group will incorporate dedicated Business Architecture and Enterprise Architecture streams into the Open CA program at some point in the near future. Our members are working on defining the core skills that an architect needs to have and the specific competencies one needs for each of these three specialist areas. Therefore, going forward, applicants will be able to become an Open CA in:

  • IT Architecture
  • Business Architecture
  • Enterprise Architecture

There are approximately 3,200 individuals who are certified in our Open CA program, and by broadening the scope of the program we hope to certify many more architects. There are more than 2,300 certified IT Specialists in the Open CITS program, and many organizations around the world have identified this type of skills- and experienced-based program as a necessary part of the process to develop their own internal IT profession frameworks.

Open CA and Open CITs can be used in the recruitment process and help to guarantee a consistent and quality assured service on project proposals, procurements and on service level agreements. They can also help in the assessment of individuals in specific IT domains and provide a roadmap for their future career development.  You can find out more about our programs by visiting the professional certification area of our website.

Steve PhilpSteve Philp is the Marketing Director for the Open CA and Open CITS certification programs at The Open Group. Over the past 20 years, Steve has worked predominantly in sales, marketing and general management roles within the IT training industry. Based in Reading, UK, he joined the Open Group in 2008 to promote and develop the organization’s skills and experience-based IT certifications.

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by | May 11, 2011 · 1:54 PM

Twtpoll results from The Open Group Conference, London

The Open Group set up three informal Twitter polls this week during The Open Group Conference, London. If you wondered about the results, or just want to see what our Twitter followers think about some topline issues in the industry in very simple terms, see our twtpoll.com graphs below.

On Day One of the Conference, when the focus of the discussions was on Enterprise Architecture, we polled our Twitter followers about the perceived value of certification. Your response was perhaps disappointing, but unsurprising:

On Day Two, while we focused on security during The Open Group Jericho Forum® Conference, we queried you about what you see as being the biggest organizational security threat. Out of four stated choices, and the opportunity to fill in your own answer, the answer was unanimous: two specific areas of security keep you up at night the most.

And finally, during Day Three’s emphasis on Cloud Computing, we asked our Twitter followers about the types of Cloud they’re using or are likely to use.

What do you think of our informal poll results? Do you agree? Disagree? And why?

Want some survey results you can really sink your teeth into? View the results of The Open Group’s State of the Industry Cloud Survey. Read our blog post about it, or download the slide deck from The Open Group bookstore.

The Open Group Conference, London is in member meetings for the rest of this week. Join us in Austin, July 18-22, for our next Conference! Join us for best practices and case studies on Enterprise Architecture, Cloud, Security and more, presented by preeminent thought leaders in the industry.

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by | February 18, 2011 · 12:05 AM

What’s the use of getting certified?

By Mieke Mahakena, Capgemini

After a day discussing business architecture methods and certification at The Open Group Conference in San Diego last week, I had to step back and consider if what I have been doing was still adding value. It seems to me that there is still much resistance against certification. “I don’t need to be certified; I have my college degree.” Or, “I have so much experience. Why should I need to prove anything?”

But let me ask you a question. Suppose you need to have surgery. The surgeon tells you that he hasn’t got a medical license, but you shouldn’t worry because he is so experienced. Would you let him perform surgery on you? I wouldn’t! So, if we expect others to be able to prove their skills before we hire them to work for us, shouldn’t the same apply to business architects? In our profession, mistakes can have severe consequences. As such, it is only reasonable for customers to demand some kind of impartial proof of our professional skills.

To become a good surgeon you not only need good education, you need a lot of practical experience as well. The same goes for the IT and architecture profession: Your skills develop with every new practical experience. This brings us to the importance of the ITAC or ITSC certifications. Both programs define the skills necessary for a certain profession and use a well-defined certification process to ensure that the candidate has the experience needed to develop those skills.

During The Open Group India Conference in March, you will be able to learn more about these certification programs and find out if they can bring value to you and your organization.

Certification will be a topic of discussion at The Open Group India Conference in Chennai (March 7), Hyderabad (March 9) and Pune (March 11). Join us for best practices and case studies in the areas of Enterprise Architecture, Security, Cloud and Certification, presented by preeminent thought leaders in the industry.

Find out more about the ITSC program by joining our webinar on Thursday, March 3.

Mieke Mahakena is an architect and architecture trainer at Capgemini Academy and label lead for the architecture training portfolio. She is the chair of the Business Forum at The Open Group, working on business architecture methods and certification. She is based in the Netherlands.

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by | February 17, 2011 · 1:00 AM

T-Shaped people

By Steve Philp, The Open Group

We recently had an exhibition stand at the HR Directors Business Summit, which took place in Birmingham, UK. One of the main reasons for us attending this event was to find out the role HR plays in developing an internal IT profession, particularly for their IT Specialists.

On the second day of the conference there was a keynote presentation from Jill McDonald, the CEO and President of McDonald’s UK, who was talking about the CEO’s viewpoint of what is required from the strategic HR Director. Part of this presentation discussed the need to find t-shaped people within the organization. This is something that we often hear from both vendors and corporate organizations when they talk about what they are looking for from their IT staff.

T-shaped people are individuals who are experts or specialists in a core skill but also have a broad range of skills in other areas. A t-shaped person combines the broad level of skills and knowledge (the top horizontal part of the T) with specialist skills in a specific functional area (the bottom, vertical part of the T). They are not generalists because they have a specific core area of expertise but are often also referred to as generalizing specialists as well as T-shaped people.

A generalizing specialist is someone who: 1) Has one or more technical specialties […]. 2) Has at least a general knowledge of software development. 3) Has at least a general knowledge of the business domain in which they work. 4) Actively seeks to gain new skills in both their existing specialties as well as in other areas, including both technical and domain areas. – Scott Ambler, “Generalizing Specialist: A Definition”

T-shaped people work well in teams because they can see a situation from a different perspective, can reduce bottlenecks, fill skills gaps and take on new skill sets quickly. This then leads to higher team productivity and greater flexibility.

The Open Group IT Specialist (ITSC) program measures an individual’s core competence in a specific stream or domain. However, it also covers a broader range of skills and competencies related to people, business, project management and architecture. In addition, the program looks at an individual’s work experience, professional development and community contribution. The conformance requirements of the program are mapped against your skills and experience rather than a body of knowledge and we assess people skills as well as technical abilities. Therefore, if it’s t-shaped people that you are looking for, then hiring somebody with ITSC status is a good place to start.

Find out more about the ITSC program by joining our webinar on Thursday, March 3.

Steve PhilpSteve Philp is the Marketing Director for the IT Architect and IT Specialist certification programs at The Open Group. Over the past 20 years, Steve has worked predominantly in sales, marketing and general management roles within the IT training industry. Based in Reading, UK, he joined the Open Group in 2008 to promote and develop the organization’s skills and experience-based IT certifications.

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by | January 5, 2011 · 1:00 AM

New year, new certification

By Steve Philp, The Open Group

At the beginning of every new calendar year, many organizations discuss with employees specific job-related objectives and career development plans for the next 12 months and beyond. For many individuals, certification is highlighted as something that they should be working towards during the course of the year.

Until recently, virtually all IT certifications have been based on an individual’s recollection of a body of knowledge and his/her ability to pass a computer-based test. Unfortunately, these certifications do not prove that you can apply this knowledge successfully in practice. To achieve certified status you usually have to attend the relevant training course or read the appropriate self-study material before taking the examination. However, knowledge in itself is not an accurate measure of competence and, while question-based tests are practical and objective, they are also more susceptible to fraud.http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1152

Perhaps a better method of evaluating competence to carry out a specific role is to examine the skills and experience that an individual has demonstrated in his/her work. This type of certification usually requires you to prepare some form of written application followed by either an individual or panel interview which may or may not involve a formal presentation as part of the process.

In recent years, The Open Group has developed the IT Architect Certification (ITAC) and IT Specialist (ITSC) programs that are based entirely on skills and experience, and that assess an individual’s “people skills” as well as their technical abilities. There is no test-based examination but instead, applicants must complete a comprehensive application package and then be interviewed by three existing certified board members. Each of the interviews last for one hour and gives the candidate the opportunity to explain to the interviewer how they have met the conformance requirements of the program.

Many organizations around the world have identified this type of skills- and experienced-based program as a necessary part of the process to develop their own internal IT profession. These certifications can also be used in the recruitment process and help to guarantee a consistent and quality-assured service on project proposals, procurements and on service level agreements. As a result, the benefit of achieving this type of IT certification often proves to be much more rewarding for both individuals and organizations.

Steve PhilpSteve Philp is the Marketing Director for the IT Architect and IT Specialist certification programs at The Open Group. Over the past 20 years, Steve has worked predominantly in sales, marketing and general management roles within the IT training industry. Based in Reading, UK, he joined The Open Group in 2008 to promote and develop the organization’s skills and experience-based IT certifications.

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by | December 20, 2010 · 12:04 AM

IT: The professionals

By Steve Philp, The Open Group

The European Commission (EC) recently warned of a potential 350,000-plus shortfall in IT practitioners in the region by 2015 and criticised the UK for failing to adequately promote professionalism in the industry.  According to EC principal administrator André Richier, although Europe has approximately four million IT practitioners, 50 per cent are not IT degree-qualified.certification

While the EC raises some interesting points about the education of those entering the field of IT, it’s important not to lose sight of what’s really important – ensuring IT executives are continually improving and developing their skills and capabilities.

Developments in technology are moving faster than ever and bringing about major changes to the lives of IT professionals.  Today, for instance, it’s crucial IT professionals are not just technical experts but able to speak the language of business and ensure the work of the IT function is closely aligned to business objectives.  This is particularly so when it comes to cloud computing where pressure is mounting for IT teams to clearly articulate the benefits the technology can offer the business.

Business decision makers aren’t interested in the details of cloud computing implementation but do want to know that IT teams understand their situation and are well placed to solve the challenges they face.  In short, they want to know important IT decisions being made in their business are in the hands of true professionals.

ITSCCertification can act as an important mark of professional standards and inspire confidence by verifying the qualities and skills IT executives have with regards to the effective deployment, implementation and operation of IT solutions. It’s these factors that led to the launch of the Open Group’s IT Specialist Certification (ITSC) Programme.  The programme is peer reviewed, vendor-neutral and global, ensuring IT executives can use it to distinguish their skills regardless of the organisation they work for.  As such, it guarantees a professional standard, assuring business leaders that the IT professionals they have in place can help address the challenges they face.  Given the current pressures to do more with less and the rising importance of IT to business, expect to see certification rise in importance in the months ahead.

Steve PhilpSteve Philp is the Marketing Director for the IT Architect and IT Specialist certification programs at The Open Group. Over the past 20 years, Steve has worked predominantly in sales, marketing and general management roles within the IT training industry. Based in Reading, UK, he joined the Open Group in 2008 to promote and develop the organization’s skills and experience-based IT certifications.

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