 So we've heard about, we've heard about the program from the, from the open group perspective, how it was built, what it's, what it's aimed at doing and, and a very high level points about the, about the program and the details. So, what can it do for your career and for your organization is our next topic and to. To speak to that, we have Dr Scott Scott, who is the program director, global C. T. L. education and IBM architect, professional lead. And IBM global technical sales. Scott has more than 30 years with IBM, having served in technical sales education and sales management roles across several IBM organizations over the course of his career. He's currently serving, as I said, it as the IBM architect, professional lead, and is responsible for global technical education and skills for the IBM architects in the IBM global sales organization. And in this session, Scott's going to discuss an experience experientially based point of view on the value of the open profession program as we've been talking about it as seen through the eyes of a global education skills and technical professional leader. He'll focus on the value to the individual technical profession in terms of skills, credentials, community engagement and career progression. And likewise for the participating corporation, he'll discuss the impact on standards and practice quality of service risk mitigation, and the benefits of having a career framework necessary for maintaining an agile qualified responsive for workforce. So, a warm welcome from the open group please for Dr Scott now. Over to you Scott. Thank you very much. Thank you Steve and apologize for the overly long introduction that I must have written. So, I'm happy to be with all of you here today, whether it's live or on the replay. I do want to emphasize that that I have two complementary roles right now. As Steve mentioned, one is focused on skills and education for the architect profession within IBM subset of the of the architects globally. And the other also global role is architect profession leader, which means that I get down into some execution details with regard to the career model and how we make this all work as a predated certification program with the open group. So, complementary roles and I'll try to express some of that as I go along. I realized this is a very short period of time and I've just a few charts. So, as Steve mentioned, I'm going to talk to perspectives one is the individual and the other being the benefits for the corporation. Two points on this on this chart. This is truly a global perspective so all of the feedback and the, the direction that we drive our program here at IBM has to do with global, a global perspective. And it's also the other thing is is and Steve started with this was the very challenging environment I wanted to reflect some of the current. The very dynamic environment which we find ourselves, whether that's the virus or just in, in, in broader terms, just the dramatic change in technology. The portfolio changes that we in many companies are undergoing right now. And there's an incredible requirement on technical professionals now to change their skills over, which is impacting, you know, how we fit with profession certification. So, for those new to the role. Certification does define open certification defines a journey for what experiences they need to prioritize to build their career. This is particularly true of new hires. We get a lot of accolades from new hires. Millennials and such that are newer to their careers. This type of professional guidance really helps them sort out where to go what to focus on who to make acquaintances with and, and what types of experiences to have. It's also true that professional hires and we do a lot of professional hiring. A lot of people come into this and they're, they're pleased that they can use the experiences that they bring with them. In terms, in terms of the accreditation itself. And it really provides, you know, a plan for role based skills and this is. These are skills that stand the test of time so regardless of what product you are selling or supporting or integrating, implementing or what technology area you're focused in. These are skills that transcend all of those things and they're really investments that do make sense for the long, the long period of time. So. Conformance criteria is, is one of the key aspects of our relationship with the open group. This is, we use the conformance criteria in all of our levels levels 1, level 2, level 3, and for the architect certification. So these are strategic skills. Again, these are skills that have to do with how you approach your job, your client, the decisions you're called upon to make the risks you're called upon to mitigate, etc. So very important in terms of success of these architects in client engagements. We also can focus in the profession on the career beyond the current job or assignment. And of course, there's a lot of change, a lot of very dynamic environment people make changes within the corporation and they move from corporation to corporation. This is something that they can take these consistent skills with them. It provides a community and you'll see this when I talk about the career model. This really provides an opportunity for profession professionals regardless of their stage in their career to engage with others to be reviewed by others to review others to mentor and be mentored. That's really important aspect and important for the development of the individual. And then we lastly, we really reinforces the program reinforces the value of earning credentials. Sometimes technical people are very good at promoting themselves other times they're not and I think this, at least we've seen that this provides visibility. And it provides a way to share best practices and so. So those are some of the thoughts that come to mind with the advantages of the individual. Now, what I'm sharing with you now is we, and this will be similar to what James described is we cheap we looked at it will constantly looking at at our profession model. And what we did in 2017 is we moved away from the big bang. Here is your application for certification is James was describing we moved to a journey where you collect credentials and this is the chart we used to talk about. Profession has both short term and long term benefits. We used to think of profession more as career less as, you know, tactical benefits, but the truth is it puts you right immediately on to a path to develop skills that are useful in your job right away. As well as the skills. It's, you know, again, stand the test of time. So we said, look, if you're an IBM architect. We have simplified the requirements. It's no longer a big dissertation, a big investment. It's something that you can accumulate over time with your job. We have conformance criteria that is very clear. It's very explicit and it changes by level. The credentials can be externalized through the open group, which is always been seen as being very attractive, particularly as people change, change jobs. And we referred to it as bad as you go. This was about the same time that digital credentials became very popular. So this is just five years ago. We streamlined the certification. And this is what one important point to make is that simplification remains a goal of ours. I mean, we, we probably created perhaps too many digital credentials at the beginning. So we learn over time every few years. We take another look and we try to simplify the certification process to focus on where is the value. Where is the value, not the work digital personal elements. This is again a way to show showcase your badges as you earn them your credentials. And then the portability, whether you are moving from roles within IBM, or you're moving to other companies in both cases, we've made a decided effort to make sure that you can take those credentials that you've earned. Port them to other professions or to other companies. So let me give you an example. This is again, another chart that we used in 2017 when we announced this move from a Big Bang career model to a journey. And the conversation here was, look, this is certification is important to you. It's important to your career. And we at IBM have specific education and skills we want you to develop early in your career. So we provided this example and we had 3 or 4 case studies like this, where we have Jay meet Jay and Jay is coming to IBM from from a competitor. So he is able to bring some of his project experiences with him to earn credentials or digital credentials rather. So he joins and what this chart represents is maybe a year 18 months of where Jay is focused on becoming a level 1 certified architect. He's working this in with his job requirements. So he's having a front, he's having a career conversation with his manager. They're looking at the going out to the career website. They're looking to decide what elements of credentials he needs to earn. He takes architectural thinking, which happens to be one of IBM's core education courses and I'll mention that again later. And he gets that badge, which is a requirement. And then he visits the architect profession site and he reviews what else he needs. There are profession core requirements, which in IBM's case happened to be IBM will enterprise design thinking and industry skills. As he engages with clients and has successful projects he earns project badges. At seven here you see he's earning leadership badges he's giving back he's doing presentations he's teaching classes perhaps he's doing something for the profession. He continues and there may or may not be his business unit might require him to take a certain course or certification or maybe not. In any case, when he collects all these badges, and this again could happen in slightly under a year to slightly over a year. He then applies for level 1 certification he gains his certification. It is it is complimented with the open group certification. He posted to LinkedIn he shares it on social media. So this is meant to be a journey that is integrated with the job itself. So this is basically this is the process we've been involved in and for the last 5 years. This works very well, particularly again for people new to the role or new to the company or both. So what can the, what can open certification do for a company. So, the one thing that's important a couple of things important on this chart, one is, you have the implementation flexibility, if you have the accredited certification program as IBM does. We use the conformance criteria from the open group, which is wonderful because a lot of different companies. The intellectual capital from a lot of different companies get involved in creating this conformance criteria. So you get, you get the broadly vetted role based conformance criteria. And really the thoughts and leadership from a lot of different entities that are associated with the open group. So, the company specifically, you know, it provides the guidance very specific guidance that varies at different roles levels one level to level three at different levels. It defines the career levels for the role and the criteria and skills do change with the levels as you would expect. It enforces standards of practice. So whether that be education skills, engagement methods and IBM of course has some methods that we require within this journey. So you have people right from the beginning gaining the experience that are specific to the company while conforming with the open group conformance criteria which is universally accepted as being best practice. Peer review. This is a very interesting distinguishing factor of open certification. It's not a case of you attesting that you have the skill or your manager testing that you have a skill or you've been successful. This is peer review. This is unique. It comes back looking for ways to use the peer review involved in profession certification to also confirm that there are level four plus skills involved with our hybrid cloud solutions, for example. So this idea of using peer review is really a game changer in terms of vetting the capability of employees. So this is a value to the corporation. This is your continuity across jobs and roles. This is lateral career growth, whether it's moving from profession to profession, or perhaps you're just moving to business units. You take the profession skills and accreditation with you. Same is true if you leave the company. And the rest of the process of credentials. This is something that has been very popular in the last couple of years. IBMers are very pleased to have an external credential when they earn the IBM credential. That to them is a value because it's externally recognized, something they can take with them. If they go to another company. The next thing I wanted to share with you is the way we organize our career model. This is a little bit more detail, but it'll give you a sense for the community that is created here and the consistency with which you can drive people. Their skills, their activities, their developmental experiences towards certain milestones at level one, level two, level three. So this is our portal. Essentially it is the one stop shop for anybody who's interested in becoming certified in the architect profession. So on the left, you can see that we started a very early stage. We're focused in on people that aren't architects, but maybe want to become architects or they think they have an interest in the profession. So we describe what the role is, what the careers are, what IBM architects do and aspiring architects. We have a billy for them to go in and kind of get a taste for the types of activities that would be involved in people talk about their own careers. And then you get into the more mainline certification content itself. These are for people that are committed to the architect profession and now want to certify. So we really focus in those areas describing what credentials do you need at level one, two and three. What is conformance criteria. This is the time to really get comfortable with the open group conformance criteria at each of the levels. So this is how we support the career model. It's important because it allows you to find people allows you to create that community, which is so important to the career. The next chart I wanted to focus on. Oh, so this is, this is really commenting a little bit on my other role, but they really came together nicely education and the certification. We had the opportunity. I mentioned earlier that we have a couple of education courses required for our certification. And one of them is architectural thinking. And it's really. So this profession investment that we've made over time and we continue to revisit has given us an ability to invest. And one of the investments we've made is on improving our education and it's not a coincidence that, you know, the pandemic of course has accelerated this, but we've moved to digital education as many of you I'm sure have. But it's given us a way to change how we do education. So what we do is we have hybrid models of delivery for this class. This is the example. If you look on the right hand slot. Part of this of the chart. You see everything in blue is kind of pre pre recorded video lectures by architects. Everything in pink is the instructors. So it's a mixed model over 3 weeks used to be a 30 day class. You just, I'm sorry, 30 hour class that you would just get through in 4 days. Now it's over 3 weeks, couple hours a day. The thought here is that you can continue to develop yourself while staying engaged with your clients staying in the field. And the instructors love it because they spend their time. In pink areas, as you can see, they're not doing lectures anymore. They're collaborating and answering questions and guiding and mentoring people. And the green are the case studies. So the point is, it's a hybrid delivery model. It allows you to stay in the field. And we think it's a much more effective way to drive some of the key skills that you need for the profession. So this is an example of where our commitment to the, to the profession, to the open profession has given us ability to make investments around a portfolio of education that really drives the value of the career. The next chart. The business impact over the years we've tried many different ways to assess the value what I would say is important on this chart is. We can see increased quality and engagements of architects that are certified. We can see reduced risk in projects. And in some cases we can see quantitative results not always easy to find. We did involve ourselves with MIT last year we did about an 8 month study they looked back through 10 years of data that looked at skills and architect levels and certification levels. And so I'll share with you just a couple of the findings here. So the peer review model I've mentioned a couple of times really contributes to the ability to assess skills in a way that's I think very credible. And we think about learning in terms of you learn something you practice it you apply it and you get the results. And so we really think that peer review drives at the latter stages of this the apply and the results. So we're very happy about that. And the individuals on a certification path typically have me they make their quota essentially we call business objectives performance. They make their quota 10 points higher than those that don't. That's something that we found in this study last year. Certification provides a structure for learning. And we found that continuous learners experience 15% higher probability of promotion. So that's career progression. And then open certification drives higher levels of mentoring leadership. Our career model by its very nature requires peer review smear subject matter expert review. Mentoring all kinds of collaboration throughout the process. So we see that is accelerating the base capability of the organization. So that's another benefit that we see with with open certification. Finally, just to summarize. So the elements that are particularly valuable for IBM for the architect profession we feel are this ability to drive strategic applied skills through the conformance criteria. It also creates a culture of support for people whether they're new, or whether they're just progressing through their careers. So it's a culture of mentoring leadership and skills. It creates a very progressive well structured journey for technical professionals to know where they need to go next and what they need to do to get there. And honestly, we're benefiting from the broader technical community that contributes to the open group. So in a sense, you know, the rising tide is lifting all of the boats. That's true. I think for participants in the open group, I think it's true for participants in the IBM ACP program itself. And again, external credentialing and reciprocation credentialing is very popular. It gives people a sense that they're really investing in their future. And that portability is there for them to take it no matter, take it wherever they go. So we see amazing results both at the individual and the company level. As I said, we're continuously looking to try to simplify. That's definitely a theme again this year as new technology really amps up the need for people to take other types of skill building activities such as product certifications and so on. So we're competing a bit with that. And it's just been a very exciting journey. I would say the last five years with the badge as you go has been very successful. I think there's ways for us to simplify that focus on the value. That's what we're going to continue to do. But we've just had a very good experience with with open certification. So I don't know if we're going to hold questions, but that's all I had for today. Thank you for your attention. Scott, that was fantastic. Thank you very much for that. We're going to ask the questions in the panel session later. So please don't go away because we'll have some for you. But it's a great insight into into what it means for the individuals and the organization that's that's investing in those individuals. And it's great to hear it summarized so so succinctly and I'm sure people will have some questions as a reminder please put those in the Q&A channel and we will ask those later in the day and meanwhile, warm virtual round of applause for Scott now. Thank you Scott.