Education /  

Education Platform


Click to view the Iasa Career Path Framework
Iasa's certification and course offerings are recognized as the global standard in architect education. Our programs ensure that architects have the skills and capabilities needed to grow professionally.
 
The Iasa Education Platform comprises of four major categories of vendor and technology agnostic programs and services including training, certification, mentorship and corporate support.

 
These programs are based on the following core resources:

    1. The Career Path - The Iasa Career Path serves as the primary source for understanding how an architect advances through their career. By establishing a technical ladder for architects, an organization resolves to lay the foundation for more successful IT maintenance and projects.
    2. The IT Architect Body of Knowledge (ITABoK) - The ITABoK features a matrix of five essential skills that have been found to support successful architecture initiatives across all architect roles in an enterprise. The ITABoK has been shaped by thousands of practicing architects from a variety of industries, geographies and specializations.
    3. The Skills Taxonomy - The Iasa Skills Taxonomy is the cornerstone of Iasa's training curriculum and certification structure. It provides a mapping of the five foundational skills described in the ITABoK to four prominant architect communities that work together to support an enterprise architecture.
    4. The Iasa Engagement Model - Iasa's engagement model describes all ways that architects touch a business or customer and determines the success or failure of an architecture team. Engagment is all about contribution to shareholder value. Iasa can work with your organization to develop custom training to address the specific needs of your team.

      Training

      The Iasa community is at the forefront in providing the most current skills training, best practices and business development strategies. Our courses and certification examinations are lead by the Iasa Board of Education, which is a volunteer, member-based board of certified architects who are responsible for setting our global curriculum, certification and education policies.

      To find available training courses please visit our course listing... 

       

        Certification

        Iasa certifications are the first global industry architect certifications that are completely vendor independent and run only by practicing architects. Iasa provides four levels of certification which describe the major milestones in an architect's career.

        1. Iasa Foundation Certification (IFC) - Level 1 - Certified individuals will demonstrate awareness of the Foundation ITABoK through a multiple choice exam
        2. Iasa Associate Certification (IAC) - Level 2 - Certified individuals will demonstrate  practical application of Associate ITABoK and their Specialization ITABoK through multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, short answer and design challenge questions.
        3. Iasa Certified IT Architect Professional (CITA-P) - Level 3 - Certified individuals will demonstrate excellence and experience in applying skills and knowledge from ITABoK, Skills Taxonomy and Specialization through experience documentation, presentation and panel interviews.
        4. Iasa Certified IT Architect Master (CITA-M) - Level 4 - Certified individuals will demonstrate synthesis and industry leadership in the the Skills Taxonomy, their primary Specialization, depth in a particular Domain or Sub-Specialization, as well as significant contribution to industry through research, mentoring and other contributions. This will be demonstrated through personal and professional references, experience documentation, presentation, contribution description and verification and panel interviews.

         To learn more about Iasa certifications please visit the certification page...

        Mentorship

        The single greatest contributor to gaining architecture capability is experience. The mentoring program provides an opportunity for less experienced architects to work with CITA-P certified architects and Iasa Fellows in developing their capabilities.

        Candidates work on real life problems within their organizations while benefiting from the experience and knowledge of their mentor. The mentorship program also provides an excellent way to begin preparation for the CITA-P board process. In addition, we work with organizations to develop their own mentoing process to help internal architects grow.

        To learn more please visit the mentorship page...

        Corporate Support

        Currently corporations receive very little support for architect roles within the company. Most organizations design their own architect job descriptions, processes, capability models, training and even certifications from scratch. There are numerous issues with this approach:

        1. The cost of this model can be 5-10 times that of other professions where only certified professionals are hired from the outside.
        2. The quality of this model tends to be much lower than that of industry run professions like medicine and accounting.
        3. Much of the experience gathered cannot be transferred into the company because internal standards are so different.

        To avoid these issues many organizations choose the Iasa recommended approach of standardizing on the architect professional model and hiring based on skills and experienced based certification. While Iasa does not do general consulting work, Iasa provides the following services to companies:

        1. Corporate Center of Excellence in Architecture
        2. Training and Team Development
        3. Mentoring Programs
        4. Certifications
        5. Hi-Potential Programs
        6. Tribal Knowledge Acquisition

         To learn more please visit the corporate programs page...