Date: May 24, 2024

It had been a few years I started my architecture journey when I achieved the Certified IT Architect Foundation (CITA-F) from IASA. Now continuing my journey becoming a practitioner architect.

The Associate level (CITA-A) is the next logical step in the IASA offering. The Associate level consists of 2 parts: Business Technology Strategy (BTS) and a specialization choosing from Business Architecture, Information Architecture, Software Architecture, Infrastructure Architecture or Solution Architecture.

Looking at the Body of Knowledge (BOK), the Associate level provided a structured approach to gaining architecture skills. Given I already have the Foundation, diving deeper into the BOK will be beneficial. Business Technology Strategy is one of the key pillars introduced at the Foundation level.

Given there are 2 parts to getting CITA Associate, I attended the Business Technology Strategy (BTS) course to kick start the path in October 2023. The BTS course is often described as a mini-MBA for the Architect or any technical person covering the bare essentials enabling situational analysis and decision making.

The "Business Technology Strategy (BTS)" course content indeed has a wide range of topics typically covered in any MBA cirriculum. Furthermore, with the provided workshops on the relevant topics, it just makes the practicality of the course even more meaningful.

The BTS exam was included at the end of the course. I attempted the exam and didn't find any surprises. There were a few calculations but quite straighforward. The exam was proctored online and open-book hence the course notes and materials could be referenced. Unfortunately, I did not get the results immediately after the exam, an approximate 4-week wait time was needed. I did pass the exam, getting my results in November 2023.

I looked forward to the specialization to solidify my skills.

Long story short, go with a specialization that reflected my past and current experience. Yet also consider the path I would like to explore in the future.

Having said that, my intuition tells me my specialization should be Solution Architecture. The term "solution architecture" can have different meaning to different people. But from an IT perspective, I define it as "architecture for a solution or specific project". From an architecture perspective, I define "solution" as "a product or service having its own lifecycle covering all domains of architecture". Given the domains of architecture are business, information/ data, software/ application and infrastructure/ technology, therefore, solution architecture covers a bit of every domain.

Despite solution architecture is probably my first choice at the moment, software architecture is really what I am or was doing all along. Looking into the future, business architecture is probably the end game.

Few months passed since achieving BTS, I attended the course for the specialization in April 2024. I chose Solution Architecture as my specialization.

The "Solution Architecture" course covered all the four domains of architecture: business, information/ data, software/ application, and infrastructure/ technology. Furthermore, it solidified what solution architects ought to know, such as the solution life cycle, engagement model, non-functional requirements, common architecture evaluation techniques, etc.

As for the separate architecture domains, there was no deep dive into any particular topics, just a high-level introduction of the concepts informing what it is and when to use it. Such topics included: business model canvas, balanced scorecard, information governance, different types of (software) architecture styles and testing approaches, data center tiers/ specifications, etc.

Throughout the course, workshops were used to gain practice creating various artifacts or outputs. Like before, the open-book, proctored Solution Architecture exam was included at the end of the course. I did notice some exam questions were not relevant to the course or solution architecture in general. Despite that, the overall exam was reasonable. There was approximately 4-week wait time to get the results. I did pass the exam.