 Hi, good morning and welcome to our Open Professions round table. We have our Open Professions certified panel here, our panel of experts arrayed around the table for a little bit of a discussion here. We've got some questions that we'd like to ask you and I think this is a really great representation of folks who've been working in the industry for a while, have many different certifications and have gone down the path of becoming professionally certified and have some great experience with the Open Group program. And so let's get started here and ask a few questions. I'll ask a question, a couple of folks will answer and we'll try to get around the table as fast as we possibly can. So first question is, how has the Open Professions certification evolved since you first obtained your certification from the early days? I mean, has it always stayed the same? I think Paul, you'd be a great person to answer that one. Yeah, well, so my first certification came about 15 years ago, so a reasonable amount of time for it to evolve over. I'm certified in the architect professions. I'm going to focus mostly on that one, but clearly we've added other professions like data science in that time as well. So, you know, those are some of the changes, but if I think about predominantly the architect one, it's become, I think, broader and more inclusive. And what I mean by that is originally the certification questions when I went through had been formed from the experiences of architects working on solutions on large projects, for example. So that was the kind of the main core of where the body and the work had come from. And it needed a little bit of interpretation for some of the emerging areas, including areas like enterprise architecture. And certainly as enterprise architecture and competencies like business architecture have become more mainstream, information architecture, security architecture type specialisms have become part of that. The certification has grown to accommodate those more obviously. I think it's they've always been part of it. They've not been excluded, but it's been more deliberately aligned to sort of understand how those specialisms fit within the whole family of the profession and the field of architecture and what is core. And just behind that, I would say, though, the nice part is it hasn't flipped and flopped with fashion. It definitely persists with what I would see as a kind of enduring capability, but with present practice. Excellent. So another question here is what does your company get out of supporting open profession standards and certification programs? Scott, you just became kindral. How is it helping you guys evolve? You know, I think there are two things that supporting open professions really does for us. One is that it helps us bring together our professionals with a shared body of knowledge in doing so that really helps us to both communicate internally as well as communicate not only among the architect profession, but to communicate with the many varied professions that we have. That set of common realized knowledge and standards really helps us to get the work done that we need much more efficiently. But more than that, being able to participate in a set of common standards not only helps us inside our organization, but externally with our clients as well, especially for those that also support the open profession standards. It gives us a common language to be able to use. We think about architecture in the same way. We talk about architecture in the same way. And along with that as well, we organize similarly. So when we get together to do work, we're really working in concert as one common extended team. Great. That's awesome, Scott. So Ling, how does your company, you know, how do you help your company get value out of your certification? Well, at a personal level, I find that the certification program helps drive mentoring within my organization. So for instance, you know, as I mentor others in their career progression, I am able to use the certification program as a roadmap to help my mentees build those skills and experiences that are able to be useful for them as they tackle projects and deliverables. So as this pervades through the organization, it helps to accelerate the capability of the organization and promote a culture of mentoring. So that is how. Thank you very much. Awesome. Phil, how do you kind of come from a different perspective in your career? So how has it helped you and the company, you know, go after more business? So first of all, thank you for asking me to join today. I look to the open group and the professions as an external reference point. It helps myself and the organizations that I work for to orientate inside the universe that is the IT industry. It establishes a benchmark for professionalism and it's a North Star. It's the point at which we aspire to engage in a professional manner to undertake very complex pieces of work to the best of our ability. I guess that's it. It's the base standard. It's the gold standard. Everything from there on up is essentially what we do as professionals. Well, that's a great way of putting it. I love the idea that you think of the program as the gold standard. I think that we're going to put you on all the commercials from now on. So yeah, thank you very much. So let's see here. So how does being certified as a professional, you know, how do you how do you give somebody, you know, who's just starting out in your career now that you are certified advice to achieve a professional certification? Maureen, one of the things that one of the things I would advise is think about the certification really as a career model, something that can help you on your journey. It embraces the concept of this is not just a job, right? This is a profession and professions have to be trusted. And to do that, you have to meet certain standards. And so I would say, look at what those standards are early. And as you are going through a project, you know, you'll know what you should document. And in fact, the questions are going to help you even do the projects better. We have many data scientists at IBM who really have found a lot of value in just how they have to fill out some of the information for certification. And it's really, I think the beauty of it is this is a globally recognized standard. And unlike so many certifications that are in the market right now, the open group one is professional and it's vendor neutral and methodology based. And so it applies no matter where you go in your career. That's a great way of thinking about it. Phil, I had a same question. How do you help mentor and bring up new folks grow talent? So there's a lovely saying, which is that good people look after good people. And the emphasis you can read good many, many ways there. So good relates to, again, a professional standard. It's an entry point. It's so from a career perspective, from a framework perspective, it's essentially it's a destination for the young guys. And it's incumbent upon fellow professionals to guide other professionals to lead the other one, as it were, through the minefield of their early career, to ultimately get them to a point where they're on a level. Very early on in your career, as everybody on this call will know, you are bombarded with techniques that when you were a student, you would never ever thought you would need such like coming across new weapons, you need to know how to wield them safely. And it's all part of the journey. It's a roadmap, it's a destination, it's a framework. It's a suit of armor. It's all of those things wrapped into one. Why would you not want to take part and aspire to be part of a program like this one? Excellent. So let's move on to another question. Thanks, Phil. So how does the Open Professions Certification support equality and diversity in the workplace in the industry? Because that is a big focus. And obviously there have been some built in systematic issues with equality in the past. But how do we address that in the Open Professions program? Stephanie? As a woman in enterprise architecture in the beginning, I felt kind of alone over the years. It seems like we have added more diversity to the program. I remember my first class, I was the only woman out of 30. But I ask every now and then, you know, how many women are in the class now, classes now, and it's quite a few more. And as I'm mentoring others, there's a lot of women getting into the field as well, as well as, you know, other diverse diverse areas. And Ling, what's your take on that? Well, I feel that the fact that the certification program is developed by an independent body, such as the Open Group, lengths the itself to be vendor neutral. So it's not biased towards IBM or Raytheon or CGR. You know, it is administered independently. And that promotes equality and, you know, the fact that everybody is working against a set of well-defined requirements that is quantifiable. And in terms of diversity, the fact that everybody is working towards a common framework takes relationship out of the equation so that, you know, the manager is able to promote or recognize employees just based out of a common standard. Excellent. That is a really great way of looking at it. Maureen, what's your take? My take is that we've had several women in IBM who have communicated to me. One of the things they love about the certification process is they found it actually very empowering because it wasn't reliant on their manager or their even business unit. They were able to meet these standards. They know that they're global. They're even recognized by the British computing society. And it made them feel much more confident in their skills and their ability to apply those skills and drive business outcomes. So the other comment I want to make is that when we were putting the program together, diversity has to be baked in right at the beginning, right? So we've had diverse companies. We've had diverse people working on these standards. And and within some of the larger companies such as IBM, we have a governance board where we make sure for the professions, there's diversity representation there. So it's certainly not a one size fits all. But by having these kind of open open profession standards, I think it really supports the diversity that we're after. Right, really provides the guardrails for ensuring equality amongst individuals that one person, whether they're female, well, you know, regardless of geographic residency, race or whatever, is measured in the same way. So really great points, guys. So, yeah, I mean, I see a lot of public sector requirements for past perform and so on and so forth. So, you know, how can open profession certification support companies that bid for opportunities in the public sector? Paul, you're a public sector guy, I'm pretty sure you are. Well, I've certainly both worked in the public sector in the past, but also, you know, work into various different organizations now and companies that provide into the public sector. So what I would say is, you know, the public sector and the procurement in the public sector clearly, you know, it kind of leads away in that kind of openness and equal opportunity for all to be able to put into. I think that's that's the kind of the the the most stringent sort of need for that equality. But actually, it's true for all industries. A lot of industries like to be able to ensure that a full ecosystem of suppliers have an opportunity to be able to bid into these sorts of things. So I think what counts of public sector counts for others as well. But basically, it's just evidence, right? I mean, it's what it does in the same way that we talked about diversity. It's 100 percent merit based and it's evidenced and it's evidenced that it's current. And I think that's an important part of the professions. This isn't a I've got the badge. I did it 15 years ago. I've had to research by every three years to prove I'm still practicing. I'm still doing what that badge says that I'm doing. And so public sector clients, but but but but any industry actually is has that assurance that the people can evidence what they've done that they've got that past performance and that they're still currently practicing it. And it's fully unbiased and removes all personal subjectivity from that assessment. Ling, you know, you're focused 100 percent on public sector. How is your company or how are you helping your company drive value as you go to market for the public sector? Sure. So for federal contracts, you know, there is typically an inclusion of past performance and the key personnel in the request for proposals or RFP. And just like what Paul has mentioned, you know, providing the certification as a qualification in the resumes to submit certainly helps to increase the visibility of the submissions. So I frequently use my credential to support my case of seniority in responding to RFPs. And on the flip side for the government customer, the certification is one way where you can find the best vendor to carry out the work at hand. Excellent. Yeah. So it really helps you actually compete for business in the public sector because there's a requirement for professionalism and expertise. That's that guys. That's a really great point. So Maureen, you actually are the chair of the Open Professions Board work group. So you have some visibility into how things have kind of changed over the years, even though you weren't there at the very beginning, you helped actually you sponsored open CDS, open certified data scientists. So it's going on 20 years now. I cannot believe we've been around for 20 years, right? Times just flown and, you know, but things have evolved and how they've evolved is really important because we've kind of matched with what's going on in the industry. So how do you think things have changed and where are we going in the future? Great question, Andres. I think what we've seen is an explosion of certifications in the market. Right? People are understanding that certifications drive value, implement standards and help people work more productively together and in fact help build a community. And there's a lot right now of focus on, you know, product related certifications and they're great for building skills. But I see going forward in the next 15 years a greater emphasis on professional level certifications because that's really what encompasses the fact that you not just have those skills, but that you're applying it in a agreed to standard methodology. That's repeatable, that it can evolve over time for areas like AI and data science. Things keep changing so quickly and the standards will be kept up to date with them. So, you know, ethics and trustworthy is very big. So I see more of those kind of certifications and requirements being built in. So it's very much alive and well going into the future in terms of helping the different professions really become even more trusted by the client base. Scott, you know, since you're working to bring this to a whole new company environment, you know, what's your take on, you know, where you guys are going with it and where and how you're helping it evolve? I'll tell you, looking back on this, I've had the opportunity to be involved in the professions nearly from the start. And one of the really great things to build on what Marina talked about is we've got this common thread that we've used throughout time, which is based upon the value of the professions and of the standards in that to be able to provide a baseline. But along with that as well, we've shifted over time. So as business architecture emerge, that surface to the top, as data science emerge, that is surface to the top. And as we look forward on this in my organization, one of the things that we think is going to be very important as Marina brought up, aligned with those product certifications, is to be able to make sure that the professions evolve over time in order to support not only what's going on in the industry, but to support the entire ecosystem. We're a portion of that overall ecosystem and play that very important part, which is we're providing the baseline as Phillips said, the North Star for what you should hope to achieve. And I think over time we'll evolve to be able to continue that role. Excellent. So speaking of Phil, Phil, and how you've been around for a long time, you're a senior guy, right? So you've got to have tons of experience helping mentor folks. So how do you engage with somebody just starting off? And is it just me or is it Andras dropped out? How did you prepare to complete your certification experience? Let's start. I'm a little bit ready for it. So you have a drop to turn into a Dalek. Yeah, hold on one second here. Let's see if we get Ling. Hopefully nobody else is using house video here, but I guess we'll have to wait for Comcast to come back for a second. It's good. Thank you. Yeah, you're good from where I am now. I'm dressing everything seems fine. I can see you. See you too. OK, so Ling, you want to come back on video? Oh, I see what's happening here. You know, get rid of John, you want to somebody else speak? I say one, two, three, four, five, six. There we go. All right, I don't understand why that something. All right, so let's get that over again. So Phil, speaking of expertise, you must have had all sorts of opportunities to help mentor people in their career. How do you actually help them prepare to complete their certification experience profiles and badges? So when I saw this question was on the table, I was I was smiling, clapping my hands. I'm going to steal from Paul's words. He talked about evidencing and he talked about currentness or currency. So certainly in the larger organizations like IBM, the need to evidence current capability is at the forefront all of the time. We're repeatedly asked to be able to describe what we can do and justify our existence for good reasons, for reasons of professionalism and market readiness and a whole lot of other things. However, I'm going to bring this down to the level of human experience. I'm minded to remember a very eminent IT architect in IBM. God bless him now. He's retired. But he used to say the best part of the day was early on when he was walking his dog. And he said I do my best thinking and what he was actually saying was certainly what I do every morning. I spend a lot of time talking to my dog when I walk it. And the reason for that is I'm trying to actually work out what's going to happen during the day. And it's a process. It's a framework for actually figuring out who you are, where you are in your life and what it means to you and the people around you. So that's what I encourage my mentees to do. Again, there's a lovely expression, which is if you can't explain something to yourself, don't even bother trying to explain it to anybody else. Yeah, it's almost cathartic first, which is a lovely experience. Being an IT architect is not something that you you would wish to pass down the generations if you were truthful about it. But actually, those who aspire, those who do grasp the net as it were, they deserve the best of care. And that's what we should give them as a profession, as mentors. And what you actually need within that is somewhat to some degree, a lack of free expression that needs to be structured, there needs to be rigor, there needs to be an element of difficulty involved so that you actually know that you have accomplished something when you get to the point when you can explain to the world who you genuinely are and what you genuinely do. So what I always say to people is it's not going to be hard and don't expect you're going to win, but actually it's about winning. It's about running the race. And I hope I've said a whole lot of good things in one place there. Say, Stephanie, you've been in, you know, Raytheon for quite some time. And, you know, since you adopted the OpenCA and ACP programs and you probably mentored quite a few folks after you learned, you know, kind of the secret handshake, you know, you got any advice here around mentoring folks? Just that one of the things actually that the program did for me was get me out externally and internally contributing to the architecture discipline. And so one of the things that I help a lot of people with is making those connections to externally contribute to the discipline and internally as well. Because we have a lot of ways that that can be done. We have symposiums internally where you can go and speak. And then, of course, the open group has conferences that you can speak at, as well as forums that you can join and contribute to the discipline by creating reference architectures and frameworks and things that really help the enterprise architecture. Discipline. So I usually try and get the people that I'm mentoring involved in some of those types of things. And that helps them grow. And it's helped me grow as well, just doing that, those internal and external contributions to the architecture discipline. Excellent. So I got a question for you, Paul, because, you know, I keep getting this one over and over again. And that is, you know, can I only get professionally certified after I get my TogaF certification? Yeah, a common misperception. So the simple answer is no, but I'll kind of expand on that. So there are many, many methods that are approved, permitted for, you know, within the professions. And if I look at the architect profession in particular, then, yes, there are many that you could have. TogaF is, in course, one of them. And a couple of things even within that. When you look at the adoption of any method, you don't adopt it strictly. I mean, you know, it's sort of that you have to tailor TogaF twice, as we all know, if you're familiar with TogaF. So how people adopt method and use method is a big part of that. The one thing I would say is what we're looking for is a structured architectural approach that demonstrates an element of consistency, repeatability, options considered, you know, helps that structured thinking, solid thinking that then leads to decision making. And the reason we do that is because what you're really trying to evidence and put forward is that what you're doing is repeatable with consistent outcomes and is based on a recognized good practice. Yep, excellent. So last one, or last couple, shall I say, OpenCDS is developing a new badge, comes with four level one. Maureen, what are you guys doing? What's going on there? We are innovating, Andres. So as we said, we try to keep the profession alive. And what we are introducing is a credential that comes before the level one experienced so that people in the data sciences profession who are perhaps students or in boot camps who have some hands-on skills that they can use will enable them to kind of get on the certification path early. It's kind of a fast start for them so that they're, they don't have to have client projects where they've driven outcomes like you do for level one, the experience level. And, but you can use the hands-on, maybe you've done some projects within an academic setting or a boot camp to earn this credential. And it will give you that fast start to your career because it'll show you what the coming standards are and really kind of help that transition. So we're very excited to introduce this and launch it shortly. So you're gonna trial it and it might show up in other profession certification programs as well later on. That's what the hope is, yes. Awesome, that's some great work there. So, a lot of folks are saying like, I have many vendor and training certifications so why should I get professionally certified? So this is kind of like a great ending question. Scott, what do you say to those people? You know, I get that question all the time. And what I do is I split the difference between what it means to be certified from a product perspective, as opposed to what it means to have an open profession certification. One, the product certification is about the content of a body of knowledge, making sure that you have learned that and being able to utilize that in a question and answer type experience. The other open profession certification is really about that experiential work. As Maureen just noted, having actually gone out and performed that in a client setting or within your own organization, being able to deliver projects using that information. That is a distinct difference. And to me and the way I explain it to both the organization that I have professional leadership in for certification, as well as directly to those that I mentor and to the professional staff that I have, is the fact that being able to actually demonstrate that you've performed this capability is a significant differentiator and is a strong reason to support the overall certification path, the plans to grow your career and the reason behind wanting to pursue a step-wise ability to increase your own knowledge and to be able to demonstrate that externally. Excellent. Well, thank you very much. This has been an excellent panel. And if you have any questions of these folks, you can certainly send them in and we'll be ready and willing to engage you with the opportunity to become professionally certified. So thank you very much.