TOGAF Day 4 (Final)

Same rigorous sessions. Lunch was a drab.

I so much hoped that my team wins the Most Innovative Name competition with Name Caravan Global with this Banner.

John decided Team Ventura the winner. The name kind of remind me of the Ventura and does not directly connote Courier services that formed the core of the Case Studies. Anyway, the prizes were Mars chocolate bars and Team Ventura was nice enough to share it.

Anyway, in a couple of weeks after the assessment of the Workbook, I will be TOGAF Certified.

TOGAF Day 3

Today we were able to get as far as the F stage of the TOGAF Architecture Development Method.

At this point I as already suffering a paralysis from the Information Overload. Just could not take much more and was distracted for most part of the day.

I still tried to learn a bit more and participated in the group task. I

Each of the teams were able to present their developed Artifacts. Quite insightful. We also had a group picture taken.

The group later went out for drinks at Bungalows.

TOGAF Day 2

Day 2 is more puzzling as they sessions got more intense and so much more terms to note and models to understand. For a moment, I was swarmed but need to all I can not to get confused.

Filled with renewed respect for the Boss I work with at MTN as he has been practicing this all these over the years and most people unable to figure out his act.

Amidst the busy session. I was still able to take a couple of pictures for memory sake

 

TOGAF Day 1

Though I still continue in the IASA Mentoring program. I had to pause for a few days to attain a TOGAF Certification.

Training facilitated by John Polgreen from Architecting the Enterprise. I have had a bit of experience with Frameworks having worked on eTOM and NGOSS over the last couple of years so TOGAF is not pretty new but I have a bit of issues understanding the Architectural models. I hoped this training would help address that.

I spent two hours last night reading the TOGAF 9e material which seems simple at the beginning but quickly turned cryptic after a couple of pages.

The training today mentioned some of the stuff I was trying to read last night and give me better confidence in understanding the terms. I will give reading the material another shot later tonight.

A little surprised when it was announced we registered for the TOGAF 8  and not TOGAF 9 but John quickly clarified that there is a makeup exam specific to moving to TOGAF 9 from 8.

I am not sure how much of the Architectural Models we would be able to handle in the four day training but I hoped we can do all. On the brighter side, I would have bagged the TOGAF Cert title by the end of the week.

Journey to EA: IASA Mentoring Day 4

 

Another Mentor just accepted  to indulge me. He is Lalo Steinmann. He has experience in Architecture Strategy and currently working on Public Sector Cloud Strategy for Microsoft.

So far I have been able to set my learning goals with Lalo Steinmann. A little similar to Scott’s goals but more on Strategy which is Lalo’s obviously core strength.

I mailed Scott to request permission to pass as I got a lot to get ready for tomorrow. Another key reason of rescheduling our session for today is that I am beginning to suffer from information overload and need time to assimilate the little I have learnt.

Journey to EA: IASA Mentoring Day 3

 

Spent a bit time today reading about Business Architecture but then I got an interview to prepare for and still got a lot of the companies products to learn about.

Buzzed Scott on GTalk around 7.30pm GMT +1. Just before then, I had a thought not to contact him today to give myself time to prepare better for his sessions. I can’t be seen asking dumb questions. This will mean having to mail him to inform him not to bother planning for me today and that changed my mind. I still got yesterday’s CITA-P Skill Assessment feedback to get from him.

During the chat, he advices that our sessions will be focused on Business and Human Dynamics (two key areas I was clearly weak in the Assessment). He advice I get a few books

• Portable MBA Series
• The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and Life
• Subscribe to Fortune Magazine or any other local Business magazines

He excuse to dash for a meeting and we done for the day. I still pray silently that Grady Booch to accept me as mentee.

The number of Mentees rose to 19.

Journey to EA: IASA Mentoring Day 2

After reading the IASA Mentee handbook just before bed the previous night. I realised a key Goal visibly missing in my goals set on day 1 which is to

Develop and build a healthy/cordial relationship with my mentor

On getting to work, I immediately responded to Scott's and composed another mail on my ipad about myself with a picture of my family and I. Discovered later through Scott that all test after the picture got chuncked off and only a portion of the mail got delivered (still cannot explain what happened).

I left a message for Scott on the message board to buzz when he's available. He replied a few minutes later requesting for my resume and a CITA-P Skill Assessment form. Fortunately, I had recent resume handy.

The Skill Assessment was quite an eye-opener as I could quickly connect the dots of a lot of my missing skills. My summary score (hope I was objective in the scoring) is as shown below. Score based on 1-4 (mind you there are 10 proficiency levels).

Business Technology Strategy 1

IT Environment 2.2

Design Skills 2.2

Human Dynamics 2

Quality Attributes 2.1

Software Architecture 2.2

Infrastructure Architecture 2

We later had our first phone conversation. He was soft spoken and assuring. The discussion surrounds on the role of EA and it's report line.

Paul Preiss declined my request for Mentoring on a good ground that I had already been accepted by a Mentor and like Scott will only want to a handle a Single Mentee.

The numbe of mentee regsisted grew to 18। I realized there could be room for more mentees so I invited a few friends to come join.

Grady Booch just joined the list of Mentor now.