Date: November 10, 2023

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 practising 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 shall be looking 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.

I attended the course for the specialization.