My CTA Journey

I wanted to take some time to share my CTA journey as I recently completed my #journeyToCTA by passing my review board in October, 2021. This wasn't the easiest of tasks that I've ever undertaken, but I can say that the journey was well worth the effort. Many people ask 'is it really worth it?'. This is a personal decision, and many of us attempt the CTA credential for many reasons. My reasons definitely changed throughout the process, going from just 'credential seeking' to really wanting to grow as an architect and be able to inspire and help others to achieve the CTA as well.

My journey really started in 2016 when I decided to go for the Platform Developer I certification. I had been working with salesforce since 2006 as a .NET developer building integration middleware to connect Salesforce with other systems via the SOAP API. I also became the Salesforce admin & developer as well. PD1 was my first Salesforce certification as I had been able to work in the ecosystem for many years without any certs having so much experience. I decided that I wanted to work towards the CTA, and back then the first step was PD1. Then came the architect pyramid, requiring us to get both the Application & System Architect credentials before we would be eligible for CTA. I then put it on the back burner for a bit as I had just become a Salesforce Consulting partner and wanted to work towards building that up first.

Then in 2018, I was required to get a second Consultant cert in order to keep my Salesforce partner status. This required me to go get my Admin cert so that I could then get my Sales Cloud Consultant cert. I got them both around May of 2018, and then I decided to just keep going. I realized if there ever was a time to get my pre-reqs for CTA, this was the time to do it. I started doing about 1 cert every 1-2 weeks, and ended up doing 19 by the end of 2018. Finally I had become eligible for CTA in the summer of 2018.

In April 2019 I attended CTA-601 taught by Steve Baines. I highly recommend this course to anyone looking to embark on this journey. It helped me understand the exam, and it made me realize the importance of the study guide. I'll come back to this later, but I really never forgot the importance of it after that course. Then in May 2019, I was brought into an LBA study group with Gemma Blezard, who was preparing for her review board. She then introduced me to Matt Morris, who was also preparing for his board attempt. I had the privilege of judging mocks for the both of them, which was my first exposure to actual review board mocks. This was such a great learning experience for me to work through some scenarios and see how they should be presented.

After Matt & Gemma's board attempts, I walked away from the journey for over a year. I had a lot going on in my professional life, so I just didn't have the time or energy to put towards CTA. I realized what sort of effort it would take and just knew that I didn't have the time. Around August 2020, I decided I wanted to jump back in and start preparing for the board. I emailed Salesforce about getting a review board date thinking it wouldn't be any sooner than 4-6 months out. Around early September, I got an email that I was scheduled for my board on November 30th. EEEkkk!!! I had never even done a mock at this point, I had only judged, and I wasn't doing any sort of study or revision. This made me a bit nervous, so I turned to Sebastian Wagner who runs Flow Republic to help me get ready in a very short period of time. The Flow Republic course is usually a minimum of 6 months, but Seb put together an aggressive cohort for a few of us that only had a couple months to prepare.

About half-way through the program, 3 out of 4 of my Flow Republic cohort decided to postpone. I was on the fence at this point myself about postponing because I really didn't feel like I was going to be ready and was also starting to feel burnt out. I was about to send an email to Suzanne to postpone my board, but after hearing that everyone went to the back of the queue and after consulting with my coach at the time Doina Poppa, I decided to just stick to the plan and take a shot. We felt I had a good chance of passing, or maybe even getting a partial pass so why not just go for it.

My plan had been to do a 3-4 extra community mocks in the two weeks leading up to my board, all of which fell through. By the time my board came around I had only done a total of 6 mocks and these were through my 1-on-1 Flow Republic coaching sessions. All the community mocks I had planned I just wasn't able to muster up and get done for one reason or another (a lot of general anxiety and feeling burnt out, and I was terrified to present to others - this was not a good way to go into the board whatsoever). I felt like if I could just give it all I could on the day of my board and pass, I would never have to present to anyone else ever again. This really was the wrong mindset to have, and it doesn't lead to much success.

On the day of my board, I actually felt pretty good and I did better than I ever had with my time management and preparation. I felt like I had put together a solid solution and presentation, but I was absolutely terrified during q&a. I was able to answer most questions, but due to being so nervous I definitely rambled on with some of my answers and wasn't always answering exactly what was asked of me. This is not a good way to handle your q&a. Once it was over, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. It took a few days for me to recover, but I had a lot of anxiety while waiting for my results. It was about a week and a half of on/off panic attacks. A couple of days before I got my results I had a dream that Seb handed me an envelope with my results - he said 'you came close but unfortunately it was a full failure'. Once my results came in, that dream would prove to be true - not even a two section retake, but a full failure. This was absolutely devastating to me, and I pretty much had a meltdown. I was ready to find a new career path and felt like the CTA path just wasn't meant for me.

After about a day or two of feeling pretty horrible, I ended up talking with Johann Furmann. He talked me off the ledge and told me that I cannot give up, that I needed to keep going on this journey. He explained to me what he and his 3 study partners did to prepare for their boards. At the time, 3 out of 4 had passed their boards and the 4th was still waiting for his attempt. Hearing what they did, I realized it was going to take a lot more effort if I wanted to pass the board. I knew that if I made another attempt, I wasn't leaving anything up to luck and needed to be able to handle anything that was thrown at me. I couldn't handle another failure. What I didn't realize at the time was that failing my first board was the best thing that could have happened FOR me. It really was a blessing in disguise, and looking back I wouldn't change a thing.

From my conversation with Johann I realized one of the things that I had been missing was a study group - people that I could meet with regularly to have discussions, do mocks, challenge each other, help each other with our gaps and help each other to properly prepare. That was missing from my first attempt, so I decided I was starting a study group to make sure I was fully prepared this time. Knowing that there were some others in Flow Republic that needed to do retakes as well (some just two section retakes), I decided to start up a study group and run it on my own Slack workspace. We started by really focusing on the study guide and walking through all of the sections. The study guide is extremely important to know inside and out, and you need to address all areas of it through your presentation. I also joined Charlie Guo's 1111 chatter group and was joining his Saturday sessions. From there, I had met some others such as James Quinn who had also failed his first board. I set up a weekly cadence for my study sessions Mon/Wed/Fri 12-1pm and Sunday afternoons with someone presenting a mock afterwards. James & Charlie from 1111, as well as some others, then started attending my study sessions as well. I posted on the Architect & LBA groups and others started to join too. The group became popular pretty quickly and I realized it was more than just a study group - it was becoming a study community beyond anything that we currently had for CTA.

Around February of 2021, we had our first member pass their review board - Ben Jenkin. Ben had been a regular contributor and showed up at all our study sessions. He did a few mocks with the group as well. Unfortunately, he didn't want us to record his mocks, so we never got any recordings of our first group CTA. About a month later, we had a few more people pass. And after that, a few more...and then some more. One after another, people were knocking down the CTA review board from our group and they attributed it to the regular group discussions and the ability to do many mocks with quality judges. And what was even better is the CTAs who were passing were staying involved - showing up to study calls, giving advice, presenting on topics that really helped them prepare, and serving as judges for people doing mocks. Before I knew it, we had over 10 CTAs who passed while being a part of our group. At this point, I really just enjoyed running the study group and seeing people succeed. It was around the end of May when I realized that I needed to start taking my own re-attempt seriously again. Salesforce had just brought in the requirement of passing CTA-602 (now just the review board evaluation), which I had considered doing anyways before it was required. I decided to start up a smaller tight-knit study cohort that met every day outside of the larger study sessions. Part of my inspiration for this was there were a few people in the group who had not been successful on passing the board. Since I was going for a re-attempt, I thought why not create a smaller group of us all going for full retakes so we could make sure we all pass the next time around. I called our group the CTA Warriors, because despite getting knocked down we were getting back up tougher and stronger for our boards. A few of us had to take our review board evaluations, so we helped each other prepare for those mid-summer. There were five of us and we all had similar targets for taking our boards, Sept-Nov. Around August, we all had our board dates locked in - two in Sept, me by myself in Oct, and two more in Nov.

The first two went in Sept and we really made a push to make sure they were prepared by then. We mostly met Mon-Fri nights 7-9pm, sometimes longer. What we did was someone would present a scenario, we would all solve it, we would do q&a and then we would walk through the scenario line by line going through every single requirement comparing how each of us solved it. This sometimes took days but it really helped us think through all considerations for a requirement. We tried to focus on the simplest solution possible that would actually work and meet the requirement, and also identify any assumptions that needed to me made. Then on Sat & Sun we met with the larger study groups, and presented & judged mocks with the larger audiences. This process really got us prepared, and by the time the first two of our group went to their boards our preparation really showed. James was the first of the Warriors to pass his board and become a CTA, after 3 previous failed attempts. Charlie had passed all but 1 section which was security. This was a very positive result for us. Next up was me - I had another month after Charlie & James to prepare. We had done most of our studying up until this point, so for me it was mostly just doing mocks and practicing my presentation & strategy.

But then, a wrench was thrown into the mix. In late August, I was invited to Dreamforce in San Francisco. I was asked to speak during the first ever Architect Keynote about my trailblazer story. Some people had been talking about the study group and what it was doing for them and since Salesforce had heard about this, they wanted me to talk about it. Of course I wasn't going to turn down this opportunity, so during my last final push for my review board I took a week off to attend Dreamforce. I was then awarded a coveted Golden Hoodie during the architect keynote. Up until this point, a lot of the pain I had felt from failing my first board started to be erased by watching others in my group succeed and knowing that I had some sort of part in that. Seeing others become successful and then even being recognized for that really helped erase what was such a heartbreaking experience for me. This is when I realized that failing my first review board was only the beginning of my journey and that I would not have changed it to be any other way. Being able to help others along the way to try and be successful myself was the best thing that could have happened. It made me realize sometimes our greatest success comes from our failures. I was rewriting the story that I once found to be so traumatizing. It was turning into something much bigger than myself, and a lot more beautiful and amazing than I could have ever dreamed or planned. I say it was all an accident, but was it really?

Fast forward to October - I finally get to re-attempt my board. This time around I was cool, confident and I knew I was prepared. I was doing some really great mocks, and my last few had felt very good - I felt more than ready. I had also become much better at my q&a, which my peers really helped me practice and hone. I also presented to 3 CTAs (all who had been a part of my group) with the Benelux group, which is a group that runs super organized mocks. This time around, I did exactly what I set out to do - I made sure I was able to handle anything, and I did as I had fully passed my board this time. I now was #2 from the Warriors to pass the board. I had also pulled in a 6th member in September, another female that I had met in my CTA-601 and who had also joined Flow Republic, Krishna Tatta. She was preparing for a November review board, and two others in the group had November as well so with two already going in Sept we had room for one more. We now had three others to prepare for their November boards, so the work wasn't over yet. We still met pretty regularly, and we judged mocks for the last three Warriors right up until they took their boards. I can't say enough how proud I am of how dedicated this group became to passing their boards, and the results really showed. After the Nov boards we had two more CTAs - Krishna & Shoaib and Amit got a two section retake. So now we had 4 CTAs out of 6 total.

Now it is December and Charlie got to do his 1 section retake on security. This time it was a success - CTA #5 for the Warriors. So now it's up to Amit with his two section retake to become Warrior CTA #6. As a lot of us say, it takes a village, and we are all in it now to help him prepare and succeed. Let's wish him luck in February!

Now that I've passed my board I'm staying committed to helping others succeed on their CTA journey, especially other females. I want to implement some more stuff with the study group and I have a lot of ideas for the future. We have over 20 people who have passed their board as part of the group, which is pretty amazing for just the first year. For now I've just been taking a bit of a break because not only did I have to prepare myself, but there were 6 of us all preparing at the same time. My best advice to anyone out there is to create your own type of Warriors group. I learned from Johann what it was going to take to pass the board, and I'm passing this along to all of you as well. There is also another group who are now all CTAs, the CTA Gang of Four, two of whom were part of our larger study group - Jitendra Zaa & Waruna Buwaneka https://ctagof.com/. If you want to join our study group just check my profile for the Slack invite link. This is where you can find others to connect with and start your own Warriors, GOF or come up with some other really cool name :)