Course Highlights: A case study will be running throughout the course to co relate the concepts with real life examples , interspersed with puzzles , crosswords and quizzes apart from time boxed activity sessions to reiterate the learning during the sessions and make way for an enhanced learning experience.

Course Giveaways :

• Course Voucher ( $ 495 USD ) with a one year validity , the exam can be taken from any Pearson Vue center in any city across the world.
• Course Content in printed form
• Togaf 9.2 E book ( 532 pages -pdf format)
• Practical Real world examples for every concept in TOGAF with how it is done in practice. How to apply the generic principles to any domain and derive value in your organization.Read what they said – testimonials
• A lot of mock sessions to prepare you for the certification with sessions interspersed with exercises all through the course.
• Can be converted to PDUs if you are looking to convert them for professional learning alternatively.

Finally become Togaf 9.1 Certified

Most often learning is about letting go of old patterns and involves learning , relearning and unlearning knowledge. Our training helps mould minds and help them think with outside the normal way where people are exposed to set patterns and fixed ideas on architecture and beliefs. We train and mentor folks to get outside of the usual thinking pattern which is an essential skill set for the master builders that would be required to build an edifice/organisation of lasting value.  We thus enable your work force to be trained and retrained as they now would now be able to see the same task or assignment with the end goal in mind and have the architectural big picture. This helps the team in a big way as if you do not paint a picture to the team and explain them the rationale behind it they will still do a picture which would not be the one intended.

Most often learning is about letting go of old patterns and involves learning , relearning and unlearning knowledge. Our training helps mould minds and help them think with outside the normal way where people are exposed to set patterns and fixed ideas on architecture and beliefs. We train and mentor folks to get outside of the usual thinking pattern which is an essential skill set for the master builders that would be required to build an edifice/organisation of lasting value.  We thus enable your work force to be trained and retrained as they now would now be able to see the same task or assignment with the end goal in mind and have the architectural big picture. This helps the team in a big way as if you do not paint a picture to the team and explain them the rationale behind it they will still do a picture which would not be the one intended.

Agility and TOGAF 9.2. Being Agile is part of the norm today. It is oft confused with many things such as doing everything fast and without any process. Some say it is learning from failing fast. Some others take credit that we are agile and so do not ask us for any process or documentation whatsoever. One thing is clear agility in everything that we are expected to do (people, process and technology ) is here to stay. Call it by any name or buzz word being agile is catching up quickly with companies and more recently the US Government playbook ( rules for IT Companies working on Govt projects ) has suggested all companies to exploit agile process and frameworks where applicable when working on federal projects.

Agility is at the core of TOGAF 9.2 and is at the center of the framework. It is for the practitioner of the framework to understand the nuances and use it in day to day work. Else any tool without its proper application with contextual knowledge will make it powerless and only a tool with no power to it.When we add the contextual knowledge and harness a tool it comes out alive and becomes handy. Agile practices are part of TOGAF 9.2 and it is a useful mix of agility and architecture that a senior IT professional is expected to balance and make decisions. How well you are able to strike a balance here determines how mature your thought process is and the course teaches you how to model yourself for creating that maturity.

Why as an architect you should have abstraction and ability to get to the fine details ?

All the frameworks invariably touch upon the need for an architect to go from high level strategy to execution. How seamlessly you move from one to an other determines your maturity as an architect.

It is always better to keep a separate rack for storing your office or household items. Separation of concerns as it is referred to in architecture ensures that each layer in the architecture owns up what it is meant to and works towards making it happen.

As you grow up as an architect you need the ability to see the forest from the trees. You need to understand the details involved in lets say moving a data center in the cloud at a very high level where you see only the building blocks and also down below where you can get to see the nitty gritties of the solution. The high level solution may include a large number of building blocks and how the blocks themselves are composed of make up the details.

It all starts with a context in which you want to solve the problem.

1. Contextual Vision of where you want to go.

This the domain or the context in which your problem exists or manifests and you want to solve it. Mostly it is the 20,000 foot level.

Let’s say you are designing a social network. The high level mission statement is connecting people.

2. Conceptual level : This level of detail is more detailed than the earlier one where now you are moving one level below. The context is set and now the concepts get hashed out as to what aspects of the context you need to flesh out the details. Having defined the need for people to connect lets say over social media is out high level goal. What aspects of them same do you want to take it to the next level of details which will include how they will interact , what privileges do they share among each other and what kind of business process or data interchange happens between them and so on. Once these details are etched out , it becomes clear as to what building blocks are required to make this happen.

3. Logical ( Group them under a bucket/functionality etc)

Now the the problem having been defined at the conceptual level we need to see how to arrange them at a logical level. This generally would mean how to organize the pieces such that they are devoid of the underlying intricacies, technology stack that they run on. This also assumes that it excludes the implementation details as long as the blocks can be grouped into logical blocks for which a particular functionality be assigned or grouped.

4. Physical ( Leave it to Implementation)

This is generally the layer below the logical layer where you can decide to have a logically grouped solution being implemented using any of the technology choices on the table or leave it to implementation. Here if the logical solution has grouped the architecture into entities based on functionality , at the physical layer they could be implemented on a java stack or C# stack or ROR stack. The ability to abstract the high level details from the implementation is a key asset for an architect. One thought process is as long as the database interfaces are logically well defined. It would not matter which underlying database adapter (MySQL,Oracle,MS SQL etc) fulfills the needs for achieving the same. This helps the architect to help think of the solution independently without being constrained by one single solution.

This certification is not to be confused with Agile certifications from any standard authorities ( PMI , SAFE, Scrum ) etc. It is more of an Enterprise Architecture Course with a good mix of agility with helping one get clear with TOGAF 9.1 concepts and eventually help take the certification exam post attending this course. This includes concepts of agility as this is needed in great measure for solution architects and IT professionals in business transformation roles. This certification will help people get a practical side of TOGAF 9.1 mixing both agile and enterprise architecture and so the name “Agile Enterprise Architecture Certification Course” . We could call it simply Enterprise Architecture Course geared towards helping people certified with TOGAF 9.1 as well. Please email maileturnti [at] gmail [dot] com if you have additional doubts or queries or call 9886488030.

Most often get asked this question by experienced, very experienced and people with little experience folks on what happens to my career if you are certified in TOGAF 9.x ( version immaterial) . For that matter lets look at what is the value add from get that additional degree or title against your name that you get out of any certification or a degree.Most often you still need real world experience with it to make sense of any learning be it certifications or degrees.Some thoughts on what motivates people to look at acquiring these ….

1. Your resume looks impressive.                                                                                                           2. Potential job offers may flow for you in that direction                                                                           3. May get me a pay hike or increase or a lateral or job move.                                                             4. Gain knowledge and become a trusted authority or person and look like a seasoned IT professional who can now talk the same mumbo/jumbo and gain professional respect.                   5.Currently do not have the title of an architect / Want to move along the career as an architect and may be the certification can help                                                                                                   6.Have been entrenched deep down with a specific technology and domain and look forward to see the whole picture.

While the above are some common concerns. Lets look at the value proposition of TOGAF though not covering all aspects in its entirety.

TOGAF Elevator Pitch

TOGAF value explained in an elevator pitch can be stated as it is a methodology to manage your architecture while moving from AS IS to TO BE state. Mind you , your AS IS can be anything from that reflects your current IT landscape. You can be in anywhere on your journey towards accomplishing your mission and how do you go towards getting there all the while caring about agility and not keeping an eye on cost and accountability on your IT spend.

TOGAF helps one understand the nuances of IT transformations(digital is more cool now) and what is involved.

What does getting certified in TOGAF mean ? Industry values experience when it comes to solve complex problems out there at that the customer has. You as an architect has to step in and do the magic of having the right mix of people, process and technology to deliver what is needed to ease the end user pain point. Companies in the least value a person who has such certifications with the idea that such an exposure will help a person at least think in that direction instead of being raw with no experience except for some deep dive experience in say one particular area. It helps you have a T profile for an architect. Helps one scale from a solution architect to an enterprise architect. It helps you to look at the problem from a broader perspective of how it impacts the stakeholders in the company , outside , skills , technology and process to have them all work towards your mission /vision as a company.

A fool with a tool is still a fool – TOGAF No Exception

It is akin to a person clearing PMP need not necessarily be a good manager. As any framework it does expose people to a good set of principles while dealing with people , process and technology and the inherent value in applying them in practice. At the outset it is too general but with applying the organization context to it , it becomes meaningful. Which augurs with the sentiment that a fool with the tool is still a fool. Mere knowing the framework without knowing how it can be tailored for an organization is what makes it abstract for people not having the relevant experience in business and IT transformations. The other reason also being the maturity of the organization who tend to relate the pieces of the framework by the book in a prescriptive fashion without checking on what suits their organization context. Same with agile prescriptions where have heard people say scrum says so we do it. Not really checking on how much of it is really relevant in their particular context. Scrum purists may dismiss this as SCRUM BUT , reality is different and not necessarily by the book. Togaf does not inherently project itself as having a strong agile backdrop to it. But the principles are very much there and it is for the practitioners to present that flavor to the end audience with agility at its core.

Customer Sentiment – What do you know about my problem and context ?

As can be known from experience there can be no single silver bullet to IT transformations , each customer is a case study in itself. The larger the portfolio , the more difficult it is to straight jacket it into a group. Experience comes by walking alongside the customer apart from the knowledge at hand.They call this as Management by Walking Around ( MBWA) instead of an MBA alone.  TOGAF exposes architects to a methodology which mature organizations have used as best practice and earned value. Many of the companies in the fortune list have used it extensively and have tailored them to suit their stack and solve their individual issues.