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How to pass BIAN's Banking Architecture Foundation Certification

If you like to view the video version of this blog post, you can click on the video.

Thanks to Allah; I have passed "BIAN's Banking Architecture Foundation Certification" on Feb-2022. In this blog post, I’m sharing my experience on how you can achieve this certification.

Target Audience (Personal opinion)

This certification is targeting enterprise, business, application, data, solution, and integration architects working in FSI (Financial Services Industry) domain. It is not for infrastructure, technology architects.

Pre-requisites (Personal opinion)

Officially, there are no pre-requisites for the certification, but I think you need to have a look at the below pre-requisites from my point of view.

Category	Pre-requisite	Mandatory / Preferred	Rationale
Experience	Have Enterprise Architecture experience or knowledge, such as a certificate or working experience in TOGAF Standard.	Must	The material considers you have knowledge in Enterprise Architecture and multiple domains are classified based on TOGAF standard. Even book chapters is addressing multiple domains and relations with TOGAF.
Experience	Having working experience in bank, Fintech or FSI service provider.	Must	Understanding BIAN artifacts (APIs, Service Domain landscape, ... etc) requires that you have working experience in FSI.
Experience	Understanding of ArchiMate as a modeling language.	Must	It is used as standard notation in most diagrams (Strategy, Business, Application, Composite).
Experience	Basic understanding of UML (Class, Sequence diagrams).	Preferred	It is used as standard notation.

Version releases

I found two versions of the certification in the store as of the time of writing this blog. I wanted to highlight the difference for you to make sure you are selecting the latest version.

The version in descending order	Exam Link / Certification Logo	Included book version	Book publish date	Book ISBN	Exam price	Service landscape version
Latest as of Feb-2022			19-Jun-2021	978-9401807685	Euro: 449.95	V9
Older			31-Jan-2019	978-9401803151	Euro: 544.44	Older

Exam information

Current code: BNF
Title: BIAN Banking Architecture Foundation.
Exam language: English - ESL has no time extension (There is a feature “Language aid” where you can set the language, and the exam engine provides Google translate feature in page content).
Open book: No
Supervised: No
The number of questions: 60 MCQ (Question include negation) (Single & Multiple correct answers (The number of correct answers is mentioned in the question)).
Exam duration: 60 mins
Passing score: 42/60 (70% confirmed score from certN platform).
Time / question: 1 min
Cost: 449.95 EUR (Excluding taxes).
Exam location: Online (There is an option for an on-site exam, but not aware of the details).
Validity duration / Expiry: 2 years.

Study material

Reference	Cost	Mandatory / Optional	Note
BIAN – A framework for the financial services industry	50.49 – 65 USD (Included in exam voucher, no need to pay)	Mandatory	Certification is based on this book. But, I found the below issues, I hope they can be corrected in the newer version: 1- Some diagrams' resolution is not good and should be enhanced, some of them were not readable. Figure 2-14, 2-22, 2-27, 4-4, 5-5, 5-9, 6-3, 7-9, 9-6, A2-1 2- Some diagrams should be in color (Example: heat maps) and color has semantic but it is found diagram in greyscale. Figure 2-20, 6-4 3- It seems that copyright and the watermarked document are not allowing rotating a page. This made it hard to view landscape-oriented pages.
BIAN Semantic API Practitioner’s Guide	Free	Mandatory (Personal opinion)	The first 3 chapters of this book clarified my understanding of BIAN. Especially “Figure 8 Diagram” which connected a lot of dots.
BIAN Open Digital Repository (v9.1)	Free	Mandatory	Navigating the service domain landscape is a must, and this is the online version.
BIAN Reference Implementations	Free	Optional	Not related to certification rather very good examples of companies adapting to BIAN standard.

Study tips

The exam depends on understanding more than memorization.
The longest & most difficult chapter of the book "BIAN – A framework for the financial services industry" was "Chapter 2: Explaining the BIAN Architecture", my recommendation will be to read the first 3 chapters of "BIAN Semantic API Practitioner’s Guide" as a start before you read the official exam book for the following reasons:

It contains examples for BIAN, that illustrated the idea of every component of BIAN toolbox and meta-model. I missed some of these examples in the main book.
Uses simpler English and more straightforward wording than the original book.

Register for home online exam

Purchase the exam from the link (Payment: Credit cards, Invoice, iDeal, Paypal).
Separate email for download ebook, and you need to enter the voucher code for it.
You will be able to download a PDF with your email.
In the same email, you will get a link to "certn.global" for certification and subscription instructions.
It uses the email without a password (It sends a code for every login).
Log in and submit your name details, and agree on some terms & conditions.
Enter “exam voucher code” to activate a new exam.
You will get activated practice exams (12 attempts) & actual exams (2 attempts), these will be valid for 1 year since the day you added the voucher.
Practice attempts of exams are available for 3 months for review.
I have tried the exam on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge based on Chromium and both were working fine.

Getting exam results

Exam results are provided instantaneously, with the categorization of questions provided. You will be able to download the certification and share it on social networks as well.

References

vhls.glbal: Official exam site
Van Haren store: Exam page
BIAN Services GmbH
Request syllabus Download (Always download the latest, as it keeps updated)
Complimentary BIAN Webinar: BIAN Book - 2nd Edition (fully revised) preview - A framework for the financial services industry
Van Haren Exam Instructions – certN platform
BIAN Channel on Vimeo
BIAN Wiki
BIAN Adoption journey

How to pass TOGAF Business Architecture Level 1 in less than 1 week?

If you like to view the video version of this blog post, you can click on the video.

Thanks to Allah; I have passed "TOGAF Business Architecture Level 1" on 6-Jan-2021. In this blog post, I'm sharing my experience on how you can achieve this certification in 6 days.

If you would like to know more about the certification, I recommend that you watch this good video Applying TOGAF® Business Architecture Enhancements - The Open Group. I think this certificate makes sense in the following situations:

When you are dealing with C-Level business management.
Working with corporate strategy team.
Working with corporate program management.
Working in Enterprise Architecture Office as Business Architect.
If you are a business analyst who wants to go to the next level.

Exam information

Current exam code: OGB-001 - English
Number of questions: 30
Exam duration: 45 mins – ESL (1hrs, 15mins)
Open Book: No
Passing score: 18/30 (60%)
Multiple choice with single most correct answer.
Time / question: 1.5 mins – ESL (2.5 mins)
Cost: 315 $ - 362 $ (Including Taxes)
Validity duration / Expiry: No expiry / No renewal required.
Location: Home or testing center.

Pre-requisites

Officially: None.

Personal opinion: I will recommend having TOGAF Certification v9.2 prior to applying to this exam. For the following reasons:

This certification is for architects who wants to specialize in development of a business architecture based on TOGAF standard v9.2, so how you want to seek specialization without understanding the general framework first.
To pass this certification you will need to read specific sections from TOGAF v9.2 specification, I think it will be hard for you to understand these section without understanding how the overall TOGAF framework work; especially I consider TOGAF change the mindset of IT professionals.
TOGAF Certification is more known / wanted than this specialization so if you have limited budget better invest in TOGAF certification.

If you have earlier certification of TOGAF v9 or v9.1, please consider this post "Passing TOGAF Essentials 2018" for upgrade to v9.2 I think it will be better path & knowledge for you, also includes many aspects in business architecture from this certificate as value streams, business scenarios & others.

Study sources

1- Self Study Guide

Purchase B190-TOGAF® Business Architecture Level 1 Study Guide, 1st Edition. This is what I have done.

Reasonable price: 29.95 USD (Summer, Black Friday, and Christmas sales you can get 50%).
Authors: AndrewJosey, The Open Group and Steve Else, EA Principals
The number of pages: 206.
The number of chapters: 12 chapters.
PROS: Every chapter ends with questions, answers provided.
PROS: Includes similar exam test with same difficulty, answers provided.
PROS: One document have it all, focused target.

2- Self Study multiple resources

If you want to save the cost of previous study guide & study from a complete set of free available resources. You will need to:

Download X191-TOGAF® BUSINESS ARCHITECTURE LEVEL 1 CONFORMANCE REQUIREMENTS. It contains all required sections required for the exam, and with links to free resources from TOGAF publications.
It references the following resources:

3- Training courses

All TOGAF® 9 Accredited Training Courses are available in this link, previously I have made a small comparison below, but if you intend to select this way better to go with the full list for more updated options:

Course / Link	Cost	Duration	Notes
The Open Group Accredited Course Training Calendar	1395 USD	6 hrs - 2 days	Expensive
Good e-Learning - TOGAF® Business Architecture Level 1 eLearning	529 USD	7 hours for 6 months access	Include free exam voucher Include 2 exams Sometimes offer discounts up to 20%
EA Learning - TOGAF® Business Architecture Level 1 - eLearning	450 – 529 USD	7 hours for 6 months access	Include free exam voucher
EA principals - Applied Business Architecture	1395 USD		Active contributor in EA, and author of official TOGAF Study guide (Steve Else). Classroom or live online. Expensive

Register for home online exam

Start from “Pearson VUE The Open Group” page.
Click “Pearson VUE launch page”.
Review personal information that is from the open group profile page that will be used to create or login to Pearson VUE, before clicking “Proceed to Pearson VUE”.
In dashboard, click “View Exams”.
Select “OGB-001” “TOGAF Business Architecture Part 1”.
Select “Online from my home or office”, click “Next”.
In agree to online exam policies, please read carefully, and mark checkboxes, click “Next”.
Click “Next”
Select suitable date. Your local time zone will appear, select best way to view the timing 12/24hr.
Value with estimated tax is 362.25$
Click “Proceed to Checkout”.
Read and agree to policies, click “Accept”. (These important policies will be sent to you by email after completion).
Add card details, click “Next”, then “Submit order”.
ESL will be added after complete exam registration as long as you register from one of the ESL countries. Exam length 90 minutes!!!
Check-in time will be 30 mins earlier.
You will receive email with details of invoice, and policies / useful information.
For customer service online chat, use this link.

For detailed checklist for OnVUE exam preparation, please check this blog post Online Proctored Exams (OnVUE) Checklist

Getting exam results

After exam completed with 15 mins, I received email with subject "Score Report Available Notification". You will need to login Pearson with credentials of The Open Group, and you will find the link "View score report" and you will see your score and detailed report.

After the exam with around 8 hours, I received another email with subject "The Open Group issued you a new badge".

References

Founders Lessons Learned - Part 4: Venture Capitalists

If you are presenting the business plan to VC you don’t know and you can’t trust he won’t get the idea and build it somewhere else; it is better to present a plan for something related to the idea not the whole picture to judge what is the reaction of VC and get to know him.
Don’t get frustrated from VC when you present ideas, and they mention low experience, this is considered an advantage more than a disadvantage. For start-ups, VC looks into team spirit & idea more than experience.
Expect the following questions from VC:

What is your background?
Too young, how many years of experience?
Do you have management experience?
How are you going to make money if you are going to give it away for free?
What's the revenue mechanism?

VCs always have deals and back-doors technical people don’t like, sometimes you might want not to share all ideas with your VC.