The Enterprise Architecture Series

The Institute for Software Research International, Executive and Professional Education, offers training courses with certification exams in the domain of Enterprise Architecture (EA).

The Clinger-Cohen Act and other public initiatives, and private sector forces including globalization, have clarified the need for systematic attention to enterprise architecture. Enterprise architects have the responsibility to help their organization to integrate strategic, business, and technology planning; to improve mission performance; to achieve competitive advantage; and to realize their other organizational goals. These considerations are addressed through ISRI's standards for EA Knowledge and Skills (KSAs), that identify what enterprise architects need to know to do their jobs at various levels of the organization. Click the following link to download the top level of ISRI's EA-KSA List.

Download KSA List

ISRI's Enterprise Architecture training and certification program is based on the KSA's, and specific learning points within each KSA are used to develop the teaching objectives in each course. The ISRI EA training program consists of a series of three courses:

• Beginning Enterprise Architect 5-day course (88 specific KSAs)
• Mid-Level Enterprise Architect 5-day course (48 specific KSAs)
• Senior Enterprise Architect 3-day course (57 additional KSAs)

Each course contains an exit examination covering the relevant knowledge and skill areas, and a certificate for "Certified Enterprise Architect" (CEA) is awarded for the completion of the entire series.

Through the courses, students learn the concepts of Enterprise Architecture including major EA frameworks, program establishment, implementation methods, documentation products, and maturity measurement. The courses review the history and major approaches to EA including the Zachman EA Framework, Spewak's EA Planning Method, U.S. Federal EA Framework, FEA Reference Models, OMB's EA Assessment Framework, GAO's EA Management Maturity Framework, and Bernard's EA3 Cube Framework.

The series includes hands-on assignments designed to produce a web-based EA repository and to populate it with common documentation products and artifacts (e.g., business activity models, data models, system models, network models).

Finally, students will explore ways to link EA repository information together to make it useful for analysis and decision-making, that is, to integrate strategic, business, and technology planning to achieve the organization's goals. And the courses include several commercial EA tool demonstrations to show how to rapidly develop and populate tool-driven EA repositories.

ISRI's Curriculum Manager for Enterprise Architecture

Dr. Scott A. Bernard served as a pilot in the U.S. Navy, as Information Systems Officer, USS Enterprise (1996-1998), and Director of Network Operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1998-2000). In 2000 he completed the CIO program of the Information Resources Management College, National Defense University, and in 2001, received his PhD from Virginia Tech in Public Administration and Policy, with his dissertation being a study of Clinger-Cohen compliance for Federal CIOs. He wrote the first textbook on EA: An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture (AuthorHouse, Bloomington, Ill., 2004, ISBN: 1420880500) and co-authored A Practical Guide to Enterprise Architecture Planning (Federal CIO Council Publication, Washington, DC, January 2001).

Dr. Bernard teaches for ISRI in programs for the government of Korea, for companies such as Boeing, in ISRI's eLearning series, and for Carnegie Mellon's CIO Institute in Washington D.C. In his work for Korea, he has provided training as well as consulting for new legislation and regulations, and hosted visits from Korean officials to benchmark with counterparts in the U.S. Federal Government. He also works with ISRI as founding editor of the Journal of Enterprise Architecture.