Enhancing your skills, professional credentials and knowledge base is an ongoing journey. The right choices can boost your career and earn recognition.
Is TOGAF® certification for you? Is the Enterprise Architect path the right way forward?
According to CIO magazine, the average salary impact of a TOGAF certification is about 12%.
So, yes, this is a hot certification from a financial view, in the same league as AI and Security. That’s because businesses know that good Enterprise Architects can deliver successful business solutions.
It can also help you a lot if you are not an EA, but your job is to work directly with the EA team.
However, you must bring the right attitude to the job, not just the certification, if you really want to do the business.
Did I say “business?”
Business first, then tech
Do you think EA is a technology skill? If you did, then I need to ask: Are you the right candidate for learning the TOGAF way?
The thing is, Enterprise Architecture is a business skill first. An Enterprise Architect is not the same thing as a high-level technical expert.
The starting point is a clear understanding of business goals and objectives.
In my TOGAF Practitioner class, I start by explaining that EA is about money and people, first, not bits and bytes.
The success metrics for EA work? Dollars, usually.
The most important element of your wonderful transformation plan? People. Your job as an EA includes effective communication with all kinds of stakeholders. You recommend. They decide.
For your designs to come to life, you must empower people to write code, configure systems, operate systems.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Have you heard the mantra: People, Process, Technology? You need all three in your plan, and in that order.
Business unit chiefs hold the budget, and only sign off changes they believe in, and think can work. Team leaders must learn new ways of working and confidently help the teams adapt.
You must create the right business vision and a clear roadmap. Technology, however important, does not lead, it follows.
What it takes to succeed
© 2022 The Open Group
An EA works within a business-goals context to develop designs for business change.
That context is top-down.
What is the business trying to achieve? How does it think about risk? How does it measure success? Who are the key stakeholders? What is its capability for implementing business change?
The EA success recipe always starts with an understanding of the organization's business drivers, goals, and objectives. If you don't know where to find them, try reading the annual report!
Requests for change come from everywhere. These are usually not well enough formed to allow a leap to the answer. And you don’t want to be leaping off a cliff, do you?
EAs iterate with sponsors until a clear formal description of the change emerges. Only then can you create roadmaps to describe how the business will change.
Mapping out the changes to applications, data and technology will follow. Architects with deep domain knowledge will fill in those blanks as needed.
Architects work as a team, with all the stakeholders. We help them to see the big picture, to understand the choices, and to optimize transformation investment.
That’s the path we teach: The mindset, tools and methods needed to make this process succeed.
Isn’t the EA a technical expert?
An Enterprise Architect is not the same thing as a high-level technical expert.
As an experienced practitioner, mentor and guide, I can tell you that deep technology skills are useful, but are never enough.
An EA who knows nothing about technology may struggle and need some technical help. But someone in an EA role who knows nothing about business goals is in real danger.
A great technical expert is the go-to champion for a deep subject, someone who knows a lot about a little.
A great EA is someone who knows a little about a lot, and how to conduct the orchestra of experts. It’s not the same vibe.
The EA job is more of a servant-leader. The EA helps stakeholders make decisions, by providing informed design choices.
Which brings me around to the question: Is TOGAF certification right for you?
If your joy is being the ultimate guru, maybe not. I don’t want to turn down your business, but I don’t want to waste your time, either.
How it works
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
- Harry S Truman
In one of my first big projects, $60 million went into transforming a customer service team.
To make it work required a team approach to design that included a range of experts, technical and business. The key software vendor was an active partner, not an arms-length supplier kept in the dark.
We introduced technology that was meant to transform our insurance claims process. We completely replaced a complex, antiquated IT system for a large call center. It worked!
But the IT part was in some ways just an important detail.
There was a lot more to it than the tech. We stripped down two floors of office space. We replaced carpets, desks, lights, phones, wallboard, and yes … even some computer stuff.
About 120 claims team members had to learn new processes and tools. Had to understand new equipment, new software. Needed new user manuals, new job descriptions, new training.
The mailroom got new equipment, new processes – more training, more manuals. They engaged with computers in an entirely new way.
Half a dozen senior business leaders were involved every step of the way. They had to approve every budget, every milestone. These were our business stakeholders. They are always the ones who own the architecture, not the architect.
Our complex designs and change guidance helped them spend $60 million wisely. They got it all back in 14 months of improved operations. That’s the point. That’s the payoff.
Is TOGAF® certification for you?
If this kind of servant-leader gig makes sense to you, maybe you belong here. The salary boost doesn’t hurt, either.
The TOGAF Standard can be seen as a kind of a “cookbook.” It is a framework built over many years based on lessons learned from successes and (sometimes catastrophic) failures.
Passing the exam proves that you learned enough about the cookbook to understand how this work gets done.
You can get that certification by taking that exam:
- after self-study
- by attending a course taught by a trainer with no EA experience
- by attending a course taught by a trainer with no EA experience
Our ethos favors the third option. Yes, we will teach you how to pass the exam and help you prepare.
But we want to share more than the words in the cookbook. We want to start you on the path to helping stakeholders get real, measurable value from successful transformations.
We know what we’re talking about. Our training is not theoretical.
We’ve “walked the talk” in leading organizations like Central Government, P&G, Walmart, and Lincoln Financial. We can tell you up close how the work gets done. Hope to see you soon, if this is really the right thing for your next step.