Yet another credential. However, I do respect zapthink consulting, but every man and his dog seems to have certifications.
Looking at their 4 day bootcamp in Melbourne, September 1-4, 2008 (ps: USD1995 with USD500 early bird discount), they do the following: (quoted)
LZA Credential Levels and Requirements
Since architects come in all shapes and sizes, and since the credential program sets a quality bar for those that go through it, ZapThink has the following levels of credential to match your skills and capabilities:
Junior Licensed ZapThink Architect
- No prior enterprise architect experience necessary. Completion of four-day LZA Bootcamp including completion of all the exercises at the Bootcamp.
Senior Licensed ZapThink Architect
- Need one of the following:
- A pre-existing Senior LZA credential
- Two years of experience as an Enterprise Architect
- Completion of four-day LZA Bootcamp including completion of all the exercises at the Bootcamp
Licensed ZapThink Architect Fellow (Trainer)
- Need to have an active Senior LZA credential; AND
- Five years of experience as an architect; AND
- Participation as an apprentice ZapThink trainer at two ZapThink LZA boot camps.
The LZA Credentialing Process
The LZA credential is an annual credential. Since SOA and enterprise architecture as a whole undergoes continuous change, our ability to back your capabilities lasts as long as the knowledge is still thought-leading. As such, we offer our LZA program on an annual basis. The process for becoming a Licensed ZapThink Architect is straigth-forward and simple if you already have some enterprise architecture skills.
- Pre-Qualifications: You must have at least some demonstrable enterprise architect experience as an individual, with an enterprise end-user firm, or at a consulting practice with a consulting firm or vendor company with a consulting practice. We ask that you submit your current CV or resume and answer a few survey questions as a means to ascertain your applicable skills.
- The LZA Bootcamp: The credentialing process itself consists of a four-day workshop structured as a means to exchange the latest SOA practices, methodologies, and artifacts, and finishes on the last day with a one-on-one evaluation of your capabilities for credentialing. You leave the LZA bootcamp with a credential for your efforts, and with our knowledge of your expertise. LZA bootcamps are offered multiple times a year at designated training locations. Class sizes are limited to no more than fifty (50) so that we can properly credential each individual architect.
Licensed ZapThink Architect Course Agenda
Day One
Module 1: Fundamentals of SOA
- Business Agility
- Business Constant: Change
- The Problems of IT are The Problems of Business
- If you are in a Hole, Stop Digging!
- The Business Inflexibility Trap
- Business Agility
- Service Orientation: A Business Approach
- What is SOA?
- Is SOA New?
- One Difference is Web Services
- SOA vs. Web Services
- Confusing SOA & Web Services
- If not Web Services, Then What?
- Business Drivers for SOA
- The Distributed Computing Pendulum
- Service orientation: the next big thing?
- SOA: Paradigm Shift?
- So, How to Implement SOA?
- There’s No Such Thing as a SOA Wizard!
- Levels of Service Abstraction
- Consumers & Providers
- What are Services? (Technically, Service interfaces)
- Interoperability vs. Portability
- Service Interfaces Aren’t Good Enough!
- The Difference is the Abstraction
- The Fundamental Technical Challenge of SOA
- Multiple Interfaces per Implementation
- Multiple Implementations per Interface
- Multiple Interfaces per Business Service
- Actualizing the Business Service Abstraction
- The Secret Sauce: Metadata
- Programmatic vs. Declarative
- What are Metadata?
- Metadata for SOA
- What’s a Service Contract?
- What’s in a Contract?
- What’s NOT in the Contract
- WSDL: Service Contract Starting Point
- Contract Metadata Beyond WSDL
- Sample Service Contract Template
- How to Think Service-Oriented
- Module 1 Case Studies: Mini-Studies on SOA Use
- Shared Services: US PTO
- Reducing Integration Costs: Aeroplan
- Compliance & Volume: Wells Fargo Bank
- Meeting Client Needs: MITRE
Exercise: Service Contract Definition
In this exercise, teams will create their own Service Contract Template, explaining all the elements of metadata and information needed to describe appropriately abstract, loosely coupled, and composable Services. Then, they will use their Service contract template to sketch out the contents of a contract for a particular Service.Module 2: SOA as Architecture
- SOA & Enterprise Architecture
- What is Architecture?
- Architecture is not About the Technology
- SOA Views
- Many Perspectives on SOA
- SOA: A Technology View
- SOA: Infrastructure Service View
- SOA: A Business Service View
- SOA as Enterprise Architecture
- The Zachman Framework
- Pros & Cons of Zachman
- SOA & Zachman
- Architectural Artifacts
- Map of Architectural Artifacts
- SOA Modeling
- The SOA Metamodel
- Building the Service Model
- SOA Foundation: Model-Driven Architecture
- The Service Model: Building Business Services
- The IBM Component Business Model
- SOA Foundation: The 4+1 View Model
- The 4+1 View Model & The SOA Metamodel
- Defining the Service Model
- Service Model Drives Contract-First Development
- The Challenges of Contract-First Development
- Defining Services
- Service-Level Understanding
- Validating Service Assumptions
- Key Service Abstraction Enabler: Coarse Granularity
- Achieving Proper Granularity
- Zeroing in on Proper Granularity
- Granularity vs. Atomicity
- Example: Too Fine Grained vs. Too Coarse Grained
- Service Identification: Top Down vs. Bottom Up
- Loose Coupling: Separation of Concerns
- The Web: Loose Coupling in Action
- Service Contracts: The Key to Loose Coupling
- Levels of Coupling
- RPC vs. Document-Style
- Loose Coupling and Context
- Services & the Process Model
- Service Identification: Process Decomposition
- New Service Definition
Exercise: Building a Service Model
Participants analyze a set of high level current, and future, business and technical requirements, evolve an SOA strategy and then perform a top-down and bottom-up plan for Services, identifying their core components and key characteristics.Day Two
Module 3: SOA Infrastructure (Part I): Messaging, Data, and Legacy
- SOA Infrastructure Concepts
- Technology Selection: Approach, Choices & Challenges
- Purchasing SOA Infrastructure
- The Problems with "Vendor-Driven Architecture"
- SOA Infrastructure Starting Point: The Intermediary
- Some Intermediary Roles
- The Great ESB/ SOA Middleware Boondoggle
- Buy More Middleware for SOA?
- Compounding the Problem: No Clear ESB Definition
- Do You need an ESB for Service Mediation?
- Intermediary-Based Service Abstraction
- Building Intermediary-Based SOA Infrastructure
- Levels of SOA Infrastructure
- SOA Infrastructure: More than Intermediation
- Exposing Existing Capabilities
- The Continued Value of Legacy
- SOA, Integration & Legacy
- Legacy Migration
- Legacy Enablement
- Legacy Rejuvenation
- SOA & "Legacy" Heterogeneous Data & Data Stores
- The Data Services Layer
- Data-Level Understanding
- Understanding Data Services
- Data Integration & the Data Services Layer
- Supporting Data Services with Data Integration
- Leveraging Existing Data
- Leveraging Data Services Layer
- The Data Services Layer Abstraction
- Messaging Infrastructure
- SOA Message Exchange Patterns
- SOA Tenet: Asynchrony
- Messages vs. Events
Module 4: SOA Infrastructure (Part II): Performance, Security, and Semantics
- Addressing SOA Performance Challenges
- Challenges at the Content Level
- Challenges in Content Processing
- SOA Depends upon Transformation & Content-Based Routing
- Is XML Required for SOA?
- XML: Foundation for Web Services
- The XML Processing Problem
- The XML Performance Crisis
- Hardware vs. Software Approaches to Improve XML Performance
- Distributed XML Processing
- Critical XML Processing Challenge: Security
- The Context of IT Security
- XML Threat Prevention
- Web Services Security
- The SOA Security Challenge
- The Security Context Challenge
- Security Context Kludges
- Solving the Security Context Challenge
- The Role of Entitlement Management
- 21st Century Network Security
- Federated Security
- Semantic Level Understanding
- Understanding Application Semantics: Concepts
- Role of Application Semantics
- Semantics: The Greatest Challenge of SOA
- Resolving Semantic Issues
- Case Study: SOA Security in the Real World -- BP
Exercise: SOA Infrastructure Plan
Participants will think through and plan aspects of the SOA Infrastructure. They will use their SOA roadmap as a starting point for the SOA infrastructure plan.Module 5: SOA Governance
- Understanding Governance
- Business Empowerment vs. IT Control
- Corporate Governance
- Governance & Regulatory Compliance
- The Business Motivation for Governance
- How to Tackle Governance?
- Governance Relationships
- The Cornerstone of IT Governance is Architecture
- Elements of IT Governance Strategy
- Architectural Governance Processes
- IT Governance Feedback Loop
- SOA Governance "in the Narrow"
- What is a Policy?
- Policy: Business vs. Technical Examples
- Governance/Security Model
- The Challenge of Policy Automation
- SOA Governance Steps
- Policy Examples
- Steps for Automating Policies
- Supporting Policy Changes
- Creating the Governance Framework
- Governance Pitfall: Versioning
- Handling Service Versioning
- Governance: The Key to Business Empowerment
- Case Study: SOA Project Management & Governance -- T-Mobile
Exercise: Building a Governance Framework
Teams will lay out a plan for governance within each of the teams that will address governance issues.Module 6: SOA Quality & Management
- SOA Testing & Continuous Quality
- How do you manage change?
- The GQM Loop
- Quality & the Service Lifecycle
- SOA Quality Assurance
- Service Lifecycle Governance and Quality
- How do you Test Architecture?
- Creating a Test Plan
- SOA Testing Domains
- Service Testing Principles
- Test for Reuse/Reusability
- Test for Heterogeneity
- Test for Abstraction
- Test for Composition
- Composition Level Testing
- Integration Level Testing
- Security Level Testing
- Governance Level Testing
- The Challenge of SOA Testing
- Testing in Production??
- Quality & Management
- SOA Management: Many Facets
- The Problem with SOA Management
- The First Rule of SOA Management
- The SOA Management Conundrum
- Exception Management & SOA
- Metadata Management & SOA
- Complexities of SOA Metadata Mgmt. Marketplace
- What is a Registry?
- What is a Repository?
- Summary: Metadata Management
Exercise: SOA Implementation Test Plan
In this exercise, teams will use the scenarios from the exercises up to this point to put together a test plan for the project as scoped in the project plan exercise.Day Three
Module 7: Service Composition, Business Process, & SOBAs
- Service-Oriented Business Process
- What is a Business Process?
- The Role of Business Process Reengineering
- The Automation Paradox
- Problems with Traditional BPM Tooling
- Business Process the Old Way
- Business Process the Service-Oriented Way
- Service-Oriented Process
- Process Definitions
- Example: Orchestration vs. Choreography
- WS-* Standards for Orchestration & Choreography
- Limitations of BPEL
- Maintaining Process State
- New Process Configuration & Design
- Discovering Processes
- Shared vs. Private Processes
- Defining New Processes
- Process-Level Understanding
- Using the Process Catalog
- Process-Level Understanding
- Varieties of Business Processes
- Service Composition: Supporting Business Process with Services
- Business Logic at the Composition Level
- Exposing Composite & Data Services
- SOBAs: Rethinking the Application
- SOBA Example
- Enterprise Applications and Process
- Example: SAP NetWeaver
- Transactions and SOA
- Transactions the Loosely-Coupled Way
- What about Workflow?
- BPEL4People Scenarios
- Portals as Gateway to Workflow
- Abstract the User
- Service Consumers & Enterprise Mashups
- The Services Tipping Point
- SOBAs & Service Consumers
- The Rise of the Service Consumer
- The Rise of the Mashup
- What’s New about Mashups?
- Empower Business Users?
- Web 2.0 vs. SOA
- Mashup Example
- Enterprise Mashup in Action
- Process vs. Data?
- Use Case for SOA
- Without Governance, Mashups are Dangerous
- Without SOA, Mashups are Toys
- Case Study: SOA Journey at BP
Exercise: Planning SOBAs
Participants will consider all of the Services in their Service model, as well as the business processes in their scenario. Teams will construct at least three new business processes that in part reuse some of the Services in the Service model..Module 8: SOA Project Management
- Iterative Approaches to SOA
- Iterative: More than Step-by-Step
- SOA Project Approach
- Project Management for an SOA Project
- Iterative Problem Domain
- Iterating SOA Initiatives
- Iterate your Architecture?
- Initial Assessments
- SOA Pilots
- Milestone / KPI Plan
- The ZapThink SOA Roadmap
- Defining SOA Success
- Sequence of Steps (Iterative!)
- Implementation Notes
- Building for ongoing change: Beyond the SDLC
- The Dual Lifecycle
- Building Applications the New Way
- Where’s the code?
- The Agile SOA Lifecycle
- Measuring Agility: The Agility Model
- The Relationship with Program Management
- Measuring SOA Maturity
- SOA Maturity Model: Wipro
- SOA Maturity Model: HP
- Service Integration Maturity Model: IBM
- SOA Maturity Model -- Sonic/Systinet
- SOA Maturity Model: Oracle
- SOA Maturity Model: Software AG
- Word of Warning!
- SOA & Change Management
- Change Management: Multiple Levels
- Dealing with Service Implementation Change
- Service Contract Change
- Policy and Service Metadata Change
- Supporting Policy Changes
- Data Layer Change
- Service Infrastructure Change
- Business Process Change
- Case Study: Retail Bank ROI
Exercise: Creating a SOA Roadmap & Project Plan
Teams will put together a SOA Roadmap based on the ZapThink SOA Roadmap, and then detail a project plan for completing the first phase or iteration of the SOA project from their SOA Roadmap and Service Model. They will take into account the various tasks that go into early iterations of SOA projects, as well as the project staffing they will need to complete this project.Day Four
Module 9: Paying for SOA
- Establishing a SOA Business Case
- Building the Business Case
- Building Support for SOA
- Review: Business Drivers for SOA
- Challenges in Calculating ROI
- Business Driver: Cost Savings
- Reducing Integration Cost
- Business Driver: Reuse
- Benefit: Increasing Efficiency Thru Service Reuse
- SOA Reuse Governance
- Reuse Challenges
- Business Driver: Visibility
- Visibility & Control
- Visibility & Heterogeneity
- Complex Event Processing & SOA
- Business Driver: Business Empowerment
- Business Driver: Business Agility
- When Not to Apply SOA
- Challenge Area #2: Funding & Budgeting
- Traditional IT Funding: Project Based
- Initial SOA Funding
- Funding SOA Rollouts
- Budgeting SOA Projects
- Calculating your SOA Project Budget
- Example: SOA Project Budget
- Completing the Project Budget
- Some Things to Remember
- Good Money after Bad
Exercise: Up-Front ROI Analysis
In this exercise, teams will assemble an ROI analysis of a proposed SOA project.Module 10: Addressing SOA Organizational Challenges
- SOA Best Practices
- Challenge: Inertia in the Organization
- Challenge: Balancing IT Control & Business Empowerment
- Challenge: Reuse = Sharing
- SOA by Any Name
- SOA = Best Practices
- Is there an Architect in the House?
- Another Look: SOA Challenges
- Interaction Challenges
- More Interaction Challenges
- The "Ivory Tower" Problem
- The Power of the SOA Center of Excellence
- Convincing Technical Specialists
- Working with IT Middle Management
- Enabling Service Domains
- Service Domain Roles
- Building the right SOA team
- SOA Project Staffing
- Project Leader
- Data Specialists
- Security Specialists
- Native Systems Specialists
- Service Development Specialists
- BPM/Composition Specialists
- Governance Specialists
- Testing & Deployment Specialists
- Project Archivists
- External Services Specialists
- How Many of Each?
- EA Challenges: The Role of the EA
- Enterprise Architecture Challenges
- EA Challenges: The Risk of SOA
- The Real Challenge: People, Change and Fear
- Case Study: SOA Organizational Change & Funding @ Novartis
