Guidance for the CTA Journey

While I was on my CTA journey I wrote up some guidance and tips for things that I found helpful and what I was discovering to be of benefit to myself and many others. It's something that I have shared with members of the Architect Ohana Slack, but thought that it would be useful to put some of this down in a post as general guidance.

1. Minimum of 6-12 months of serious studying and mock practice, but could be around 2 years for a lot of people including building your knowledge base. Minimum 10 mocks, aim for 20-30 by the time you get to the board starting with smaller scenarios such as Baby Box, City Scooter, Green Roof (3-8 pages) and working your way up to ones around the length of Universal Safety, Universal Racing (8-10pages)
2. Work on the Salesforce scenarios multiple times solutioning them in multiple ways
3. Read books from the recommended reading list (Tameem’s book is a must! Recommended Reading List?
4. Work with a CTA mentor or join a course such as Flow Republic for some structure and accountability. Architect Ohana is a place where many CTAs are involved - over 70 total.
5. Work through and understand the CTA Exam Guide. Understand what each bullet point is asking you and how you can address them. This will help you build your foundational knowledge.
6. Try to study at least 2 hours a day working up to more in the last few months of the journey (15-20 hrs a week is a good target).
7. Develop a strategy for working through a scenario - what lists to make, how you read through a scenario (skim first and read more detailed on a 2nd pass? read detailed from the first pass?), how to annotate/highlight within a scenario, what diagrams to draw, how to structure your diagrams, what to label on them, when to draw your diagrams etc
8. Develop timings for your presentations - know when you should be at a certain point for a certain time
9. Practice mindfulness & meditation - doing this on a daily basis every morning really helped me through my journey
10. Get physical exercise at least a few times a week or take some yoga classes - I made sure I got in at least 20 mins of Peloton a day before my nightly study group.
11. Work with a larger study group for community mocks, open discussion, watch presentations, ask questions in q&a
12. Multiple groups are ok but not too many, try to keep it focused and what works best for your schedule
13. Try to either present a mock, judge a mock or just listen in on a mock once a week. Listening to and judging other mocks is very helpful in crafting your overall presentation strategy.
14. Work with a smaller study group of 4-5 people to present scenarios with, work through each presented scenario requirement by requirement - spend about 1 week on each scenario
15. Try to meet daily with your smaller group (mon-fri), working with larger groups on weekends

When working with your smaller group:

1. Discuss all options and their considerations for solutions especially complex ones
2. Try to collectively determine optimal solution based on assumptions?
3. Talk about what would be the justification for each choice
4. Help each other identify and resolve any gaps

When Working on Scenarios:

1. Try to figure out the simplest solution that is the easiest to explain that will both work and meet the requirements
2. Present to a CTA coach to figure out your gaps
3. Identify any of your gaps that you need to work on from your own mocks or when you judge other mocks
4. Work on presenting requirements from the User perspective - this is key to passing the exam. Watch this video for some guidance on how to practice this.
5. Work on user journey mapping & process mapping: A Beginner's Guide To User Journey Mapping | by Nick Babich | UX Planet https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/journey-mapping https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/business-process-mapping https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/trails/build-soft-skills-to-succeed-as-a-salesforce-partner?

As the review board approaches, put together a plan for the last 6-8 weeks:

1. Try to do mocks with at least one CTA judge and other people who are far along in the process or have at least attempted the board
2. Invite CTAs to judge your mocks - you can find them in Architect Ohana
3. 1-2 mocks per week, with a few in the last two weeks (around 8-10 total in the last 6-8 weeks)
4. Don’t do any intense study for the week before your review board, focus on practice
5. Try to stay off social media for the last 5-7 days
6. Daily meditation either morning, evening or (even better) both
7. Meditation on the day of your review board - 20-30 mins before the board with deep breathing exercises

In general, I found that going through sprints of 5-6 weeks of intensive study with weekly/bi-weekly mocks (aim for 3-4 in each sprint), then taking a minimum 1 week break (can be more depending on timeline) seems to be very helpful. Approach preparation in an iterative process looking at each iteration as a 5-6 week sprint with minimum of a week off in between each sprints to take a break, reset and not do too much in order to let things settle. Depending on knowledge and experience level, somewhere between 3-6 full sprints at a minimum with the last 6 week sprint being before the board. Create a plan and follow it. Have a good plan for the 6 weeks leading up to the board and make sure to follow that plan.

Really understand all system limits. Limits flashcards:

https://quizlet.com/549747105/salesforce-limits-limitations-flash-cards/

Limits mindmap by Architect Ohana member Krishna Avva:

https://medium.com/@krishnacavva/limitless-limits-of-salesforce-pun-intended-d-80086e3e5534

Some mock scenarios you can work through. Try solving the top 5 more than once, sometimes in different ways:

1. Universal Safety?- Salesforce
2. Green Roof Systems - Salesforce
3. Greenhouse Recycling - Salesforce
4. Laptops to Schools - Salesforce
5. City Scooter Share - Salesforce
6. Global Adventure Tours - Salesforce
7. Universal Racing - Salesforce
8. Galaxy Cars & Trucks - Salesforce
9. Clean Bikes - Salesforce
10. Pollard Financial - Salesforce
11. Constructus Temporary Buildings - https://cta202.com/Scenarios.html
12. Roads for Everyone - https://cta202.com/Scenarios.html
13. Hire Me Services - https://cta202.com/Scenarios.html
14. Musicians Incorporated - https://cta202.com/Scenarios.html
15. Greens & Veg - https://cta202.com/Scenarios.html

Before you can get to the review board, you need to prepare for your Architect Review Board Evaluation. This is like a mini-review board with an official Architect Program evaluator who will give you invaluable feedback once you are done presenting and some Q&A. This is a critical part of the credential process and will determine if you are ready to go to the review board or not. If you pass, you are then eligible to schedule your actual CTA review board. The timings for the evaluation can be found here.

My approach was to include all of the following slides:

• Project Overview/Requirements/Org Strategy
• Actors/Licenses
• Role Hierarchy - diagram
• System Landscape with Integrations & Security - diagram
• Data Model - diagram
• Data Migration - diagram

I suggest practicing on some of the shorter scenarios. Salesforce will tell you what is expected of you for this evaluation once you register.

1. City Scooter Share
2. Galaxy Cars and Trucks
3. Pollard Financial Services
4. Baby Box
5. Clean Bikes

If you don't know where to find some of these scenarios, they are ones that are out in the community by Salesforce. We have them in the Architect Ohana Slack.

Architect Ohana Slack - contribute and learn from other architects, join or form a CTA study group, study with others for any of the prerequisite certs, participate in mocks, learn from CTAs. We have some presentations and CTA office hours every month.

For Mock Exams:

CTA GOF - https://ctagof.com/

Benelux CTA Study Group