Reading the Map · Reference
The professional bodies, certifications, and communities that make up the enterprise architecture world. If the book has prompted you to go deeper, this is the map of where to go. For each: what it is, what it is for, its entry point, and an honest note on what it actually gives you. No body is recommended over another — the right one depends on the territory you are standing in.
Standards Bodies and Framework Owners
The Open Group — The custodian of TOGAF and ArchiMate. The most influential body in mainstream EA. Owns the dominant method (TOGAF) and notation (ArchiMate), runs their certifications, and publishes the standards. Entry point: the TOGAF Foundation certification and the freely readable standard at opengroup.org. Honest note: membership and certification signal familiarity with the dominant framework; they are a credential, not a substitute for the judgement this book argues actually matters.
ISACA — The governance and audit body; owner of COBIT. Centred on IT governance, risk, and audit. Strong in regulated industries and among professionals who sit at the intersection of IT and assurance. Entry point: COBIT Foundation; the CISA and CGEIT certifications for adjacent careers. Honest note: invaluable if your world is governance and audit; oriented toward control, which is one view of architecture’s purpose, not the only one (see Chapter 51).
SABSA Institute — The home of security architecture. Owns and certifies the SABSA method for risk-driven security architecture. Entry point: the SABSA Foundation certificate. Honest note: the most coherent treatment of security as an architecture domain rather than a checklist; worth knowing even if you never certify, because its risk-to-control traceability is a useful habit of mind.
Business Architecture Guild — The custodian of BIZBOK. The reference body for business architecture, capability mapping, and value streams. Entry point: BIZBOK Guide access via membership; the Certified Business Architect (CBA) credential. Honest note: the authority on the business layer; abstract until connected to real decisions, which is where its value is realised.
Professional Bodies for Practitioners
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT (UK) — The UK professional body for IT. Offers architecture certifications and chartered status (CITP), and a route to professional recognition across IT, not only architecture. Entry point: BCS membership; the architecture certification track. Honest note: strong for UK-based practitioners seeking recognised professional standing; broad rather than EA-specialist.
IASA (International Association of Software Architects / now IASA Global) — A practitioner-led architecture body. Vendor-neutral, focused on the architect as a profession across its specialisms (business, solution, software, infrastructure). Entry point: IASA membership and its CITA certification levels. Honest note: unusually focused on the competencies of architects rather than a single framework — closer in spirit to this book’s emphasis on thinking over credentials.
The SFIA Foundation — The Skills Framework for the Information Age. Not an architecture body as such, but the skills framework many organisations use to define and grade architecture roles. Entry point: the freely available SFIA framework. Honest note: useful for understanding how architecture roles are defined and levelled in practice, especially in large and public-sector organisations.
Communities and Movements
The Wardley Mapping community — An open, practitioner-driven movement, not a body. No certification, no membership fee; the method is shared freely and developed in the open. Entry point: Simon Wardley’s freely available book and the active community at maps.wardleymaps.com and on social channels. Honest note: the most intellectually alive corner of the strategy-and-architecture world, precisely because it has resisted professionalising into a caste.
Government and defence architecture communities — Sector-specific, around FEAF (US federal), DODAF (US defence), MODAF/NAF (UK/NATO defence). Communities of practice clustered around mandated public-sector frameworks. Entry point: the published frameworks and the relevant government digital/architecture communities. Honest note: essential if you work in these sectors; the mandated detail can be disproportionate elsewhere.
The OrdoAnimi community — The practitioner community around this book’s companion framework. Focused on architecture as a decision system rather than a documentation discipline. Entry point: framework.ordoanimi.com. Honest note: the framework this book is the on-ramp to; one considered argument about doing architecture well, offered as a path for readers ready to go deeper.
How to Choose Where to Go Deeper
A short, honest decision guide:
If you want a recognised credential and a shared vocabulary: start with TOGAF Foundation (The Open Group). It is the most widely understood, and the certification is the common currency of the field — with the caveat that it certifies familiarity, not capability.
If your world is governance, risk, or audit: start with ISACA and COBIT.
If your world is security: start with SABSA.
If your world is the business layer: start with the Business Architecture Guild and BIZBOK.
If you want to think about strategy and evolution: start with Wardley mapping — free, alive, and uncommodified.
If you want professional standing as an architect (UK): BCS and chartered status; (globally and competency-focused): IASA.
If you want to go deeper into doing architecture well as a decision discipline: the OrdoAnimi Framework, as this book’s intended sequel.
The recurring honest note across all of these: a certification or membership demonstrates familiarity with a body of knowledge. It does not demonstrate the ability to use it well in a real organisation full of real people and real constraints — which is the skill this book has argued is the actual job. Go deeper where the territory you work in demands it, and never mistake the credential for the competence.