This section of the BTABoK will examine two primary elements of architecture skills and capabilities:
- Depth focus areas which can be trained independent of Iasa specialization. These areas are those that are deep enough to offer independent training and certifications such as integration and security but are not fully a part of a single specialization such as software or infrastructure.
- Emerging topic areas in business and technology which are not yet fully developed for the main BTABoK or are purely technically driven but which show enough maturity that we believe practicing architects should be acquiring and improving their skills in these areas.
These areas are just being integrated into the BTABoK 3.0 to allow for depth focus on areas of interest to architects. They are of such magnitude that Iasa will offer supported training, addition bodies of knowledge and multi-tiered certification levels in each area. The areas differ primarily in their depth and focal point.
Focus Areas are those which are considered sub-specializations and may include business focus areas such as industry or technical focus areas such as integration. The key element is that these areas could be considered sub-specializations, or what the medical profession calls fellowships. They are areas where the industry supports unique job opportunities due to a need for deeply specialized skills on an order of magnitude higher than the existing specializations can achieve. Thus an architect might certify as a ‘Secuirty Architect’ while their over-arching specialization is Software or Infrastructure, etc.
Topic Areas are those which are considered detailed technologies or techniques which are in high-demand but are focused on particular tools, techniques, trends or other items which can be learned by any specialization. Cloud computing is one way of building and delivering systems and requires depth topic and technology understanding thus can be certified on multiple levels.
Topic Areas
- Integration
- Security
- Sustainability
Trends and techniques cover the following areas for version 3.0:
- Cloud as an emerging platform
- Agility and Architecture
- DevOps
- Architecture Patterns
We will describe each domain, trend or technique using the following table of contents:
- A description of what the trend or technique is, as a starting point, and what possible future states are indicated by this trend
- An explanation of who the trend or technique affects
- A perspective on why the trend is important and potential benefits
- A list of capabilities to which the trend or technique pertains (analogues in the rest of the BTABoK)
- Any emerging best practices or resources for further reading
We can select only a few relevant trends and techniques due to resource constraints and have picked the ones which the community of practicing CITA-P architects have deemed the most critical. Some topics are also excluded because they are not defined well enough to constitute either a defined and repeatable application or may not represent the needs of most practicing architects (i.e., may be important only to a relatively small subset of organizations, such as IoT rapid board prototyping).