ArchiMate Certification Preparation

Stage - 1 - Date: 07/07/2014

Based on my previous other certification experiences, I got the digital copy of the book and started reading it thoroughly from start. As expected, there were references to other sections of the book and I needed to have some patient or quickly browse through those sections. Overall till date, I have almost finished reading the book once and have got the confidence to a level, where I can say that at a very high level

• I know ArchiMate
• I could create views referring to ArchiMate specification
• understand why we need ArchiMate Modeling Language
• understands the importance of ArchiMate language
• understood the existing Modeling gap in Enterprise Architecture space, specifically with respect to TOGAF
• Read and understand the ArchiMate Views
• Can question on Views, if not meeting specification

These are the things which I can’t do yet:

• Can't’ rationale or challenge the overall concept of ArchiMate
• Can’t understand the Meta-Model perfectly
• Can’t understand the Behavioral Concepts fully and relate to other concepts and understand the basic need for this
• Couldn't understand fully the difference between few elements and why they are placed in those categories

So, what next?

My goal is to use ArchiMate in my day to day work, help create a standard in our organization. I want   ArchiMate to be The Modelling Language across all architectural work. So, my goal is not just for the sake of The Certification.

Following are the things I’m going to do now:

• Understanding the MetaModel of Layers and Cross Layers
• Understand and remember viewpoint and create some sample views based on those
• Reading and going through few very specific sections of the book, where I feel little lost
• Read the book - Mastering ArchiMate
• complete the test yourself sections given in the back of the book

There are few reasons why I was able to pick up ArchiMate pretty quickly. Couple of years back, I tried to complete UML certification but could not complete it because of my job change and other personal reasons. So, going through ArchiMate was not that of a strange feeling to me. Also, I’m little scared to go back and read the UML again, because ArchiMate and UML concepts might get mixed up. After all, ArchiMate is derived from UML and uses many of its concepts from UML. UML to me is more complicated probably because in UML use cases and ideas are very abstract and requires lot of imagination of the internal workings of the system. This is because UML is used for low level design of the system where one deals with object oriented language, designing classes and their interaction and relationship with each other. To complicate things more, you would have to understand the full concept of Object Oriented Programming paradigm in order to apply the UML fully. I could still remember, sequence diagram, state diagram, flow-chart, timing diagram, etc which are difficult to grasp. I’m not trying to undermine or de-motivate anyone here, just putting my thoughts. These are just my personal experiences. I loved learning UML and probably because of that reason, I’m learning ArchiMate now. So, if you don’t know UML or ArchiMate, I bet you will think it is the same thing. 

What helps in learning ArchiMate is that our imagination is limited to what we see, feel and hear day to day basis. This might be probably because I work in architecture domain and deal with these concepts on day to day basis. So, if I would like to visualize a scenario where there is a user, stakeholder, role, business service, business function, application service, application function, technology service, technology function, system software, hardware, infrastructure etc. it make more sense and I can easily relate and visualize the use case.

Things in ArchiMate get little complicated when I want to follow the specification and syntax. For example, there is a definite way on how Business Layer communicates to Application and then Technology Layer.  Similarly, understanding the basic concepts behind Behavioral, Structural and Temporary components of the Model. I’m able to understand these concepts while reading and understanding a diagram but very hard to remember these when I have to create my own diagram or find some problem with an existing diagram or view. As per my understanding, I would need to remember each Meta-Model by heart. Whenever  I create a view, I am tempted to associate two elements with some relational structure because it make some sense to me based on my previous experiences, but, it doesn't happen in ArchiMate way. So, these are the small things in ArchiMate ways, I can call it syntax or specifications, which I have to work on very hard.

With all these experiences and learning challenges, I feel that I’m ready to take the Foundation Certification, but at the same time I feel like I should wait and take both the certification exam at the same time.

Stage - 2 - Date: 02/07/2014

I completed both foundation and certification level of ArchiMate in one shot. In foundation I scored around 95% and in Certification 100%. 

Overall, I did three rounds of reading certification material which I purchased from The Open Group. The first round was little bouncy because I had to memorize lot of things. Second round was much better in terms of applying concepts. Before I started reading the material third and final time, I had a project going on at my work. Though it was not fully relevant, but I tried to apply the concepts as much as possible. I found that not many or better to say most of the people in my organization were not able to read through the models. Anyway, when I started reading the specification material for the third time, I was focused on preparing for the certification. So, I ran through the list of syllabus and make sure I understood the concepts around each topic.

Few suggestion around taking the Certification Test.

• I felt that Foundation examination was tougher than Certification because foundation required memorization of reading materials
• Certification exam was based on the right application of the model based on scenario. During practice test, what I found that, if analyze the four answer even without reading the scenario, you should be able to make which answer is compliant to ArchiMate Specification. In other words, you could find that the wrong answers have some mistake in the Model.

Hope this review helps you and if you have any question, please feel free to ask.

Stage - 3 - Date: Year 2015

Now that I'm certified and have used the concepts in few of my project, I have a better understanding of ArchiMate. I would like to share few of my random thoughts.

• ArchiMate Modeling requires extra effort up front but definitely save lot of time later on.
• You definitely need buy-in from the leadership because you Models needs to share with other Architects and they should be also trained in ArchiMate.
• I found that even in a midsize organization with average number of Application Portfolio requires a good amount of work to complete the Model. Your model becomes really bulky. So, overall, my point was that be prepared to have plentiful resources only for Modeling so that mainstream Architects can work on the real problem and leave the Modeling work to modeler. But, end of the day, this is work worth done.
• I'm involved in a huge Salesforce Service Cloud Project Implementation that will replace legacy Customer Support System. I was involved since the beginning of the this effort even before Project started. Having the background of Enterprise Architecture and ArchiMate, I really missed and wished our organization had modeled the overall IT Landscape around Customer Support System. We are in middle of project implementation and things are little chaotic for sure. Leadership needs to understand the importance of Enterprise Architecture Practice.
• You need really a good ArchiMate tool. I tried on Archi, the open source ArchiMate tool. It was good but would not recommend for a large organization and a big team with shared collaborative Architecture work.