Showing posts with label self study. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self study. Show all posts

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.MustThe 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

  1. Purchase the exam from the link (Payment: Credit cards, Invoice, iDeal, Paypal).
  2. Separate email for download ebook, and you need to enter the voucher code for it.
  3. You will be able to download a PDF with your email.
  4. In the same email, you will get a link to "certn.global" for certification and subscription instructions.
  5. It uses the email without a password (It sends a code for every login).
  6. Log in and submit your name details, and agree on some terms & conditions.
  7. Enter “exam voucher code” to activate a new exam.
  8. 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.
  9. Practice attempts of exams are available for 3 months for review.
  10. 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.


By - No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to pass Digital Practitioner Certification: DPBoK™ Foundation in less than 1 month?

Youtube video about certification contents Presentation shared in slideshare
Youtube video how to pass the certification

Thanks to Allah; I have passed Digital Practitioner Certification: DPBoK™ Foundation on 2-Apr-2021. In this blog post, I’m sharing my experience on how you can achieve this certification in less than 1 month.

Target Audience (Personal opinion)

The exam is covering 12 competencies recommended for digital business based on company size.

Company Number of employees Capital
Founder 1-3 < $1m
Team 8 - 12 > $1m
Team of teams 40 - 70 > $10m
Enduring Enterprise 350 - 500 > $50m

The exam is covering all company sizes, I think candidates considering the certification should have worked in enterprise to be able to understand the challenges at every company size. A fresh graduate or entry-level computing and digital business professionals might not face such challenges and my recommendation to them will be reading Digital Practitioner Body of Knowledge™ Standard related to their company size and not target the certification.

Exam information

  • Current code: OGD-001 DPBoK™ Part 1
  • Current release date: October 2019
  • Open book: No
  • The number of questions: 40 (Multiple choice, one correct answer).
  • Exam duration: 60 mins
  • Passing score: 26 / 40 (65%) Each correct answer scores a single point, no negative scoring.
  • Time / question: 1.5 mins
  • Cost: 360$ (414$ including VAT)
  • Retake: After 1 month
  • Exam location: Home (OnVUE Online Proctoring from Pearson VUE) or Testing center.
  • Validity duration / Expiry: Indefinite, no recertification or renewal requirements.

Note about ESL

When you are booking the exam from one of the ESL countries, you will get approval for 90 mins. But I found the actual exam time is 1 hour only. I opened a case with OnVue and the answer was that 90 mins is covering all duration including tutorials, agreements, ...etc. And this is actually mentioned in the email when I purchased the exam, as copied below:
Your appointment's time extension applies to all information presented on the computer, including any agreements and tutorials, in addition to your actual testing time. The total appointment length noted in this confirmation includes each of these components and is not equal to the actual testing time available to you.

Study material

  • Reasonable price: Sometimes discounts reach 50% (Summer, Black Friday, and Christmas sales you can get 50%).
  • The number of pages: 231.
  • The number of chapters: 14 chapters.
  • It includes a pocket guide (I didn’t use it as it was 151 pages, so I thought of reading the study guide again better).
  • It includes a reference cards summary (I didn't use it as it is considered briefer than the required information about the exam, and a smaller set of figures you need to memorize).
  • It includes one exam that is good but the actual exam is harder.
  • PROS: Every chapter ends with questions, answers provided.
  • PROS: One document has it all, focused target.

Study tips

  • Exam difficulty: Above intermediate.
  • Build a study plan (MS Project, MS Excel).
  • The study guide must be read at least twice.
  • Understand & memorize all figures in the study guide, you will have lots of questions about them.

Register for home online exam

Follow the below steps:

  1. Login to The Open Group Certification website.
  2. From left menu, click “Take an examination”.
  3. Click “Pearson VUE launch page”.
  4. 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”.
  5. In the dashboard, click “View Exams”.
  6. Select “OGD-001” “DPBoK part 1 Exam”.
  7. Select “Online from my home or office”, click “Next”.
  8. In agree to online exam policies, please read carefully, and mark checkboxes, click “Next”.
  9. Click “Next”
  10. Select a suitable date. Your local time zone will appear, select the best way to view the timing 12/24hr.
  11. Value with estimated tax is $414
  12. Click “Proceed to Checkout”.
  13. Read and agree to policies, click “Accept”. (These important policies will be sent to you by email after completion).
  14. Add card details, click “Next”, then “Submit order”.
  15. ESL will be added after complete exam registration as long as you register from one of the ESL countries. Exam length 90 minutes!!!
  16. Check-in time will be 30 mins earlier.
  17. You will receive an email with details of the invoice, and policies / useful information.
  18. For customer service online chat, use this link.

Taking exam from home

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

Getting exam results

After the exam completed and within 15 mins, I received an email with the subject "Score Report Available Notification". You will need to login to 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.

If you didn't receive an email from "The Open Group" having an email with a link to agree on the Trademark License Agreement. You will need to send an email stating your issue to certifications@opengroup.org and it will be looked at only if 6 working days (US, UK timing) has passed. When you agree on the trademark license agreement, you will have your certificate ready as a soft copy and be able to download it.

In the same reply email, you will find that the open badge may take up to 10 business days to get issued in Credly platform. I received mine after around 1 day of accepting the agreement.

By - No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)