There’s a magical moment when you’ve completed your pre-requisite certs for your CTA. You are now a System and Application architect, amazing!
Today I want to share my thoughts on the steps after you cleared the pre-requisites.
Disclaimer: There are so many different ways to go about it, this is my personal opinion, go and find your own way.
Table of Contents
- 1) Become humble again
- 2) Trailhead Technical Architect Program
- 3) Join Study Groups
- 4) Make time to study
- 5) Sign-Up for FlowRepublic
- 6) Start studying
1) Become humble again
For me, once I became a System and Application Architect I thought I knew it all. This was far from the truth, I was maybe 50% there.
Most people I know encountered an “Oh god, I didn’t know how much I don’t know.” moment.
Be prepared to be the least knowledgeable in a room again, to feel stupid, to feel lost. The CTA is a different game than anything you’ve done before.
2) Trailhead Technical Architect Program
The Trailhead Technical Architect Program team creates a lot of great resources and publishes everything you need to know.
Make sure you read everything they publish on their Trailblazer Community Group. Suzanne Ferguson and her team do a great job making the whole process very transparent.
3) Join Study Groups
(Almost) nobody does it alone. There are amazing study groups out there for you to join. I know of Melissa Shepard, Charlie Guo, Neha Nagori, and Jonida Kopper whom each run specialized architect study groups. Make sure to join at least one of them and start participating. These groups are just amazing!
4) Make time to study
You need to study a lot to become CTA, you can’t even imagine how much time you will spend studying for a really long stretch of time.
Make sure you make time in your work and private life to study. Be transparent with your partner, friend, and colleagues. Let them know you will focus on your #journeyToCTA for a long time to come.
5) Sign-Up for FlowRepublic
The #journeyToCTA can be quite confusing at times. Sebastian Wagner developed a step-by-step method to get you to your board and give you a realistic chance of passing.
You still have to do the hard work yourself, but it’s much easier.
Disclaimer: I’m one of Seb’s CTA coaches at FlowRepublic.
6) Start studying
You have to know almost everything there’s to know about and around Salesforce on a level of detail, you can’t even imagine possible.
Therefore it doesn’t really matter, in what order you study. All that matters is that you start to study and keep on doing it. The rest will follow eventually.
Nevertheless, a good place to start is getting Tameem Bahri‘s book: “Becoming a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect”
It’s a demanding journey, but it’s very rewarding. I hope I can see many more LinkedIn posts about passing the board.