Netherlands, Amsterdam
De International Association of IT Architects, afgekort IASA, is in 2002 opgericht in de Verenigde Staten, en stelt zich tot doel het vak van IT-architect verder te professionaliseren door het organiseren van netwerkbijeenkomsten, trainingen en certificeringstrajecten. Inmiddels heeft IASA meer dan 60.000 leden wereldwijd.
De Nederlandse afdeling van het, inmiddels, wereldwijde IASA heeft zich tot doel gesteld om zich op te werken tot een van de belangrijkste architectuurverenigingen in Nederland en door middel van de IASA certificering en trainingen nadruk te leggen op de professionalisering van IT-Architectuur en het onderkennen van IT-Architectuur als vakgebied.
April 2012 Monthly Chapter Meeting: Alkmaar
Voor architecten is het ontzettend belangrijk is om regelmatig van gedachten te wisselen met collega-architecten, om van elkaar te leren en om je netwerk van kennis en kunde uit te breiden. IASA Nederland heeft zich tot doel gesteld om eens in de 2-3 maanden een bijeenkomst te organiseren waarin we in willen gaan op ontwikkelingen in de IT Architectuur in de Nederlandse markt en bij IASA en aan de hand van praktijkcases en interactieve discussies van elkaar te leren.
News / Blogs
Certification of Architects
A little over 10 years ago, I got involved in a discussion on whether or not professional certification of software, system and IT architects would be useful. At the time, the conclusion was that especially in software, the profession of architect was not ready for such thing and that it was not necessary.
Since then, we've seen numerous activities in the area of certification of software and IT architects. However, a lot of those certify the knowledge of an architect on a specific technology or framework (did I hear TOGAF?), not so much on their general skills as architects.
This, I believe is not the way to go. Knowing a framework, especially the current frameworks that focus mainly on either specific processes or technology, does not make an architect a good architect. An architect should not only understand processes and technology, he should also be aware of what business he operates in, what business the customers and (end)users of the sytem he's designing operate in. Then, he needs to be able to convince general management, project management and engineers of the usefulness of the architecture he provides, and guard its realisation. 'No shortcuts allowed' is a nice credo, but it requires quite a bit of human interaction skills to realize. In my opinion, an architect should be certified on the taxonomy of skills that are required to fulfill the job, not solely on his technical abilities and good memory for process manuals. A nice overview is provided in the Iasa taxonomy, which is in line with what I've been living by the past 10 years, Gerrit Muller's views on Systems Architecting.
With that, certification gets a completely different meaning - it will allow companies to select the best architect for the job, knowing that they are hiring the person that has the right skill set and distinguish between the real architects and the ones that merely adopted the title because it was hip. To stress that last part: in the context of what I wrote above, I still have no clue what a Java Architect actually is. As someone said a while ago: 'there are only two Java Architects: the guys who set up the architeture for Java itself, almost 20 years ago, all the others are just Java expert users'.
Certification of architects on this generic skill set, with some refinements for specific roles an architect may play, is at the core of the Iasa certification, which was launched a few years ago. This certification is in that respect, comparable to the already existing, and succesful certification of Systems Engineers by INCOSE.
The certification is already quite well adopted in the USA, India and the UK and Ireland - and more countries, including The Netherlands are picking up. Together with the Dutch Iasa Chapter board, my goal is to bring this certification, and the benefits it brings, to The Netherlands. For this purpose, the Iasa Netherlands Chapter organises events for architects 4 to 5 times each year, and will facilitate trainings for Iasa Core Cerfication and board exams for Iasa CITA-P certification from this fall.
One a final note, I would like to make explicit that this type of certification and the skills it focuses on are not limited to what we tend to call 'the IT world', meaning the people working on enterprise systems, business process support and information management. The skills tested and certified in the IASA program are equally valid for software architects in embedded software, high tech systems and product engineering.
Angelo is an independent software architect, trainer and coach, with 15 years of experience in various markets, including consumer electronics, semiconductors, healthcare and banking. His main professional interest is the combination of software architecture and model driven development. Outside work, he's a husband, father and bass player. His company web site is http://www.delphino-consultancy.nl
Upcoming Events
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Past Events
The Iasa Netherlands chapter hosted another successful event December 13th 2011. Thank you all attendees for input and interactivity and making it a great event.
The agenda was:
Iasa Netherlands Member Benefits and News
Stakeholder Communication: Core of Architecting by Gerrit Muller
Recordings of the fishbowl discussion will be uploaded shortly! Please keep checking back!
Thank you everyone who attended our chapter event September 6th in Tilburg.
Alex Thissen presented a case study about Claim-based Security architecture and the Dutch chapter leadership an overview of Iasa including updates.
If you missed this event, please feel free to download and review both presentations above.
The Dutch IT architect community got together January 27, 2011 in Amersfoort, Netherlands, to celebrate the Iasa Netherland chapter Kick-off, hosted at Sogeti from 4pm-9pm. Topics of presentation and discussions were the reality of what it means to be a certified IT architect, and the demand of excellence it brings to the IT architecture profession.
If you missed the event, you still can browse through the presentations and catch all great conversations and networking by downloading the video.
Agenda:
16:00 What is IASA and what does Architecture certification bring?
Download the recording
17:00 Dinner / Networking
18:00 Martin van den Berg (EA) vs Robert Deckers (SA) – Panel Discussion - Moderator Clemens Reijnen
19:15 IASA Curriculum and Architecture Training
Download the recording
20:00 Discussion | Networking
“I like these kind of events primarily to exchange ideas with people and expand my network”.
“IASA has a promising future!”
“Architecture flourishes when there’s limited money.
Not when there’s a lot of money”.
“I would like others to present (and defend) their architecture in front of us, to discuss and learn”.
“In an Agile project you still need a strong (maybe even stronger) architect”.
Leadership
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Dennis Mulder - Chapter President
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Clemens Reijnen - Chapter Vice President |
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Dylan van Iersel - Chapter Board Member
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Angelo Hulshout - Chapter Board Member
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