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Sam Holcman: Welcome to Real Talk with Sam Holcman. I'm Sam Holcman. Thanks for joining me in this episode. And the title of this episode is Certified in Enterprise Architecture or Business Architecture, but Possibly Not Competent? Please stay with me. Why a Record Number of Enterprise Architects and Business Architects Are Actually Still Failing Stakeholders. The Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture Professions Professions face a disturbing paradox right now. With certification surpassing 100,000 people worldwide and the architecture market value at about $1.5 billion, we have never had more certified practitioners. Certified professionals also command about 25 % higher salaries. There are more certified professionals in the market than ever. and architecture certifications have grown substantially worldwide over the last decade. Yet the stakeholder satisfaction with the relevance, usability, and impact of architecture recommendations remains weak at best, reinforcing a growing concern that credentials are increasing faster than practice and practical competence. The certification industry has created a gold rush. But what are practitioners actually learning? This is not a coincidence. It is a predictable result of a profession that is over-invested in exam performance and under-invested in actual skills development. There's a certification illusion. On the surface, the profession looks stronger than ever. Career paths are more formalized. Certifications are more visible. And architecture roles are increasingly recognized as essential to business transformation and strategy execution. In theory, all of this should produce better outcomes. But that is not what many stakeholders are saying and experiencing. Too often, enterprise architects and business architects are seen as people who can produce artifacts, diagrams, and formal language, yet cannot influence decisions, build alignment, and turn strategy into practical change. The issue is not that they know the vocabulary. The issue is whether these people can actually do the work. Recent Gartner research identifies EA and BA teams as failing to evolve fast enough and making key missteps that prevent them from delivering business impact. Stakeholders increasingly view enterprise architect and business architects as disconnected from business reality, unable to communicate effectively, and focus on theoretical frameworks rather than practical outcomes. The root cause is not lack of certification. It is the teaching to an exam rather than developing actual competencies. McKinsey identifies that architects must establish a common frame of reference, which is different than a methodology. And certifying organizations need to facilitate talent development. Instead, most deliver documentation that satisfied framework requirements, but have failed to enable business outcomes. It's the teaching to the exam problem. There's a parallel in education that's hard to ignore. The teacher discussion that actually inspired this article reflects a consistent theme. Learners may succeed with a system built around tests and checklists while still lacking independence, judgment, and applied capability in the real world. The issue is not a total absence of knowledge. The issue is that the system rewards the wrong evidence of competence. Research on teaching to the test reveals that it measures superficial thinking rather than quality of learning. The same phenomena plagues architectural certifications. Practitioners can recite phases but cannot negotiate trade-offs with stakeholders. They know architectural elements but cannot build stakeholder buy-in. They have memorized maps but cannot translate business strategy into actual roadmaps. Architecture has drifted into the same trap. Many practitioners are taught how to pass an exam, describe a method, and repeat official framework terminology. But they are not taught how to lead difficult discussions, challenge weak assumptions, or guide stakeholders through ambiguity and trade-offs. This is a profound profession and professional failure. What actually is the requirement and desire of stakeholders? Stakeholders do not need enterprise and business architects to impress them with credentials. As a matter of fact, credentials are not relevant to the stakeholders. They need professionals who can connect strategy to execution, expose risk, clarify implications of change, and develop leaders to better make decisions under real-world conditions. They need people who can listen, frame issues clearly, manage competing priorities, and communicate in language executives and operational leaders can actually use. The most important capabilities are not decorative. They are essential and central to the role. And those are communication across business and technical audiences. Facilitation of conflicting viewpoints and interests. Strategic interpretation instead of framework resuscitation. Practical judgment under uncertainty. And translation of architecture into actions stakeholders can understand and actually use. Those capabilities are not built well at all through exam-centric learning, teaching, and credentialing. Enterprise architecture and business architectures are in the same failure mode. The problem affects both disciplines. Business architects may know how to create capability maps, operating models, and value streams, yet lack the ability to facilitate strategic alignment, reconcile competing priorities, or help executives decide what should change first. That leaves stakeholders with polished artifacts, yet weak outcomes. Enterprise architects face a parallel problem. They may understand structures and standards and target states, yet still fail to persuade leaders, connect technology choices to business value, or earn trust from the people they are supposed to help. In both cases, the profession, the profession, exam teaching profession, confuses framework fluency with professional competence. Here's the real talk. Here's the uncomfortable truth. The profession has confused credential volume with practitioner quality. It measures success by how many people are certified, not by whether those people can actually deliver value. It rewards framework fluency, not stakeholder confidence. It celebrates exam performance. not business results. This is why there can be record number of certified enterprise architects and business architects, and at the same time, stakeholder trust remains low and unfortunately is on that slippery slope downwards. The market's producing more people who know how to describe architecture. yet fewer people that actually know how to practice it. Now, why EACoE and BACoE matter? This is where the Enterprise Architecture Center of Excellence and the Business Architecture Center of Excellence do represent and have represented a different direction. EACoE and BACoE value is not in adding one more credential to the marketplace. The value is shifting the center of gravity from testing to practitioner development, from memorization to applied capabilities, and from artifact production to stakeholder results. A credible architecture profession for produced practitioners who can think critically instead of reciting method steps, engage stakeholders instead of talking past them, produce usable recommendations instead of ceremonial deliverables. build decision making capability instead of dependency and demonstrate competence and practice, not just in testing environments. This is the difference between certification as a signal and competence as a reality. Some closing arguments. There may be a record number of certified enterprise architects and business architects, but stakeholder satisfaction remains weak. because the profession is overvalued teaching to the exam and undervalued developing actual skills. It's actually time to look in the mirror. The result's predictable. More credentials, more artifacts, and less confidence from the people architecture is supposed to serve. The EACoE and BAC frameworks and methods have represented from its inception a fundamental departure from this exam-based certification industrial complex. Rather than teaching practitioners to pass exams on legacy frameworks, EACoE and BAC prioritize skill-based competency development over framework memorization, stakeholder engagement and communication as core architectural principles, business outcome alignment rather than artifact production, practical application through real world scenarios and mentorship, continuous capability building beyond one time certification exams. As we always say, human consumable enterprise and business architectures. Human consumable enterprise architecture and business architecture consumables. Just as educators are calling for fundamental reform to develop independent thinkers rather than test takers in the education world, the architecture profession must shift from credentialing to capability development. The market does not need more certifications. It needs architects who can influence and assist managers and executives, resolve conflicts, communicate across business units, and deliver transformation results. Until the professional changes what it teaches, how it develops practitioners, and what it accepts as evidence of competence, the numbers will continue to rise, yet the trust and value from a stakeholder perspective will continue to fall until it's possibly too late. We don't want that to happen. The question is no longer who is certified. The question is who can actually do the work. connection is not coincidental, it is causal. A record number of certified architects and a record low in stakeholder satisfaction. Skills development over exam performance is where the industry needs to go. The question is not whether you're certified. The question is whether you can actually architect. please reach out to us at www.eacoe.org and www.bacoe.org. It would be our pleasure to speak with you. We develop and certify architecture practitioners. Please join us.