I welcome the rollout of the new Open Group Business Architecture Credential for a couple of key reasons. One is that it builds on the TOGAF Standard while highlighting key methods and content already built into TOGAF. The second reason is that it will appeal to Business Analysts and Business Process Managers more so than the TOGAF Standard alone and may lead to them “graduating” to want to go after the full TOGAF Certification — we have too few “business”-oriented members of organizational planning staff getting the benefit of TOGAF’s Body of Knowledge and we need them to build the sought after Organization-Specific approach (from generic TOGAF) to transformation and/or more efficiency or effectiveness.

However, I caution people to be very selective in whom they choose to use for the required, accredited training needed to be eligible to take the associated exam. The reason is that the training, just as the case with TOGAF training itself, could just be surviving a run through of hundreds of slides and practice questions rather than gaining true actionable knowledge. EA Principals in committed to actionable knowledge in all its training and has created myriad customized scenarios to help students with benchmarking and then creating their own use cases en route to more masterful “Thinking and Acting like a True Architect”. 

We have designed our course to be respectful of students’ time available, but we still need two (short) days to ensure the knowledge is successfully passed from trainer to student in a way that respects the importance of this knowledge. At the same time, we set the stage for students to follow on with potentially condensed, specialized courses in TOGAF and ArchiMate that would build off them having gotten their Business Architecture Credential. However, if a private class wants the training to be more for just passing the exam, we can accommodate that, too. Likewise, if they would like this to be the front end of a Business Architecture + Combined TOGAF/ArchiMate class for a week, we could also design to that. In any case, you will find working with us on Business Architecture to be time very well spent.

We are thrilled to be one of the first accredited providers for The Open Groups new Business Architecture Credential. You can view more information on our Open Group accredited Applied Business Architecture training course here. 

Written by Dr. Steve Else, Chief Architect & Principal Instructor