Samuel Holcman: Thank you for tuning in to Real Talk. Be sure to join your host Sam Holcman again for another edition of our program. We'll have more Real Topics of discussion then. How do you sort out the so-called jargon from real-world practices that work? Do the members of your organization find some business or technology advice utterly confusing? Welcome to Real Talk with Sam Holcman. In this program, we set the record straight and in terms that business people and technology people can understand. Now, here is your host, Sam Holcman. I'm just saying, coffee grinders, certifiers, and real practitioners. This is Real Talk with Sam Holcman. I'm Sam Holcman. Let us be honest. Most enterprise architects and business architects start the day the same way. You roll out of bed, scroll through overnight emails, open at least six tabs of frameworks, that you will only partially read, course, warm up yesterday's coffee because the meeting starts in five minutes, and think, well, maybe today I'll finally fix that capability model I've been working on, even though nobody's looked at it yet. Because let us face it, every good architect knows their day does not really start until they have that first cup of coffee. And speaking of coffee, Let me share something interesting that caught my attention. Despite what your friends who refuse to drink anything but single origin pour over might tell you, becoming a real coffee expert is not easy. And oddly enough, this is a problem for Wall Street. Starbucks may be on every corner, but qualified coffee graders, the folks who actually certify bean quality, for the commodities market are in serious short supply. According to the Wall Street Journal, these graders endure a brutal three-stage competency program, a written exam, a three-hour coffee grinding session and grading session, and then a live tasting in front of proctors identifying defects down to the bean. Miss one? and you start over again, only five to eight percent of those that go through this pass the exam and pass on to be essentially a certified person. That's tougher than passing a California bar exam or any EA or BA certifying exam that I have seen. So it got me thinking. Imagine if our EA and BA industry had that same kind of rigor. In enterprise architecture and business architecture, too many certifications promise instant expertise. Take TOGAF as just one example. You memorize a framework, pass a multiple-choice test, and suddenly you are certified forever. Or the Business Architecture Guild, CBA. Certification there. Memorize definitions, answer questions, Check a box. These are just examples, of course. It's like calling yourself a coffee grader because you can tell the difference between a cappuccino and a macchiato. learning theory matters. But real world skill does not come from picking the right answer on a multiple choice exam. It comes from building, evaluating, and adapting. That is why I sometimes say, Certifications that only test recall, and that's what these exams do, are credentialed beginners at best. You may have 60 % of that vocabulary, but not the muscle memory, of course, and then the muscle. And that's exactly where EACoE and BACoE take a different approach. When you pursue certification through EACoE or BACoE, it is hands-on from day one. You produce real deliverables, evaluated by practitioners, not academics or test proctoring agencies or presentation slide readers. Forgive me for being a little direct. You get mentoring, detailed feedback, and coaching from people who lead transformations inside real organizations every day. The difference? You do not pass a test. You earn mastery. We build our methodology and frameworks around what actually happens in organizations, the messy, complex, political data-driven realities, not multiple choice perfection. This is why we call it Speed to competence. Speed to competence. Not speed to certificate. Not speed to logo next to your name. So just maybe we can learn something from those coffee graders on Wall Street. Their bar for expertise is high because it has to be. They're protecting the value of a global commodity. Now let's look at ourselves for a just like we as architects protect the structure and direction of an enterprise. I sometimes joke that if coffee graders ran enterprise architecture and business architecture certifications, half the industry would fail in the first sip test. But you know what? That might make everything taste a little better. Because real excellence comes from practice, from feedback, from doing. not just studying it and memorizing it and regurgitating it. And if you've ever been through the EACoE or BACoE certification, you know exactly what I mean. And now this may surprise you. The actual practice, EACoE and BOCoE, is faster, more direct to competency, and gets you ready to go, as we say, next Monday morning. So to all of you that want to be, or are real practitioners out there, keep brewing the good stuff. Keep architecting with purpose. And for those that are looking for an additional understanding, more understanding, more competency, more practitioner-focused, please reach out to us at www.eacoe.org and www.bacoe.org for a no-fee discussion of your requirements. We are ready to assist. And in closing, I'm just saying…