Well, this has been a busy week. Today, I finished day four of a four day course on The Open Group Architecture Forum (TOGAF)’s v9.1 Level 1 & 2 Enterprise Architecture certification.
The course has given me a very decent foundation of learning from which to build upon, and hopefully sit (and pass?) the Level 1 & 2 exams, probably next week. It’s a tough load of work, and the framework specification is massive – even overwhelming.
In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting more than to be in a position to sit for the certification afterwards, instead I found an even bigger reward – some sense of understanding of several principles which have surrounded or underpinned various projects I’ve been involved with over the past 10 years.
The framework isn’t prescriptive to the point of telling you how to architect, but rather presents as a methodology and a set of processes to follow in order to approach business capability needs and strategic goals from an architectural point of view.
There will be more TOGAF insights to come – once my brain recovers from the intensive four day makeover. So stay tuned.
Exam Update
Today I sat the TOGAF 9.1 Levels 1 & 2 exams (back-to-back) and I’m proud to say I achieved a score of 81, and passed. This means I’m now TOGAF 9.1 certified, and at least in theory could start practicing TOGAF-style Enterprise Architecture.
The exam was, honestly, fairly terrifying. The TOGAF 9.1 specification is very broad and contains quite a level of depth throughout the ADM, Enterprise Continuum and Governance Framework. Therefore, Level 1 – 40 multiple choice questions – can theoretically ask almost anything.
To prepare, I spent about a day doing practice exams and then boning up on areas where I got the answers wrong. Unfortunately, a lot of the online practice exams are based on older versions of the specification, and led me down the garden path a few times.
Level 2 is tough. The questions ask you to apply your knowledge of TOGAF to correctly identify the “best fit” answer from four multiple choice answers. The scenarios in the actual exam, I found, were a little harder than in the practice exams.
I’ll update this article with more insights into how to prepare for the exam in a short while.
