51075 Exam Guide

As in all my classes, I am interested in your taking away the central concepts from the lectures primarily, and secondarily from the reading.  As for a strategy for studying for the exam, I would suggest driving your study off the lectures themselves.  That is how I will be driving the creation of  the exam itself.  Among the big ideas we've talked about, I will expect you to know the issues surrounding the following:

Melissa Cook's ideas on "how we got here"--the process of decentralization of business systems
Fundamental ideas behind frameworks
How Zachman approaches the problem of architecture and enterprise architecture (framework)
How the FEA approaches this problem (framework and reference models)
What's in a FEA Reference Model (in particular, the DRM)
Role of Principles, Policies, Standards and Guidelines
DAMA Data Management Functions
The Business Information Model (and supporting artifacts)
Importance of Planning in Architecture
The Subject Area Vocaulary and its Purpose
The Subject Area Model (SAM) and its Purpose
Universal Data Models, their Purpose and Function
Our 9 Subject Areas (Geography, People/Org, Roles, etc.)
The Character and Purpose of the Conceptual Data Model (as distinguished from the Logical and Physical)
Components of the BIM
Subject Area Analysis and Methodology
Conceptual Data Modeling, and the Integration with the BIM (SAM) and UDMs
Difference between the CDM and the SAM
UML for SAM modeling (details!)
Barker Notation for CDM modeling (details!)
UDMs as Patterns
Transition from SAM to CDM, Issues and Challenges
Details of conceptual design for People/Org and Contact Mechanism

That is a lot.  If you focus around these fundamental concepts, you will do well, as long as you understand the details behind each of the above big ideas.  As for details, you will want to make sure you can read and write Barker Notation for conceptual modeling as well as the basics of UML (just those minimal features we covered).

The exam will be made up of mostly multiple choice questions (5 options) and some short answer and fill in the blank.  There will be approximately 20-25 questions on the exam. 

Some questions will be particular, such as:

Which of the following is NOT part of a FEA Reference Model?
1.  Target State Definition
2.  Transition Roadmap
3.  Principles
4.  Governance Plan (Correct answer)
5.  Standards

Some questions will be fill in the blank:

Zachman discovered that people in different functions in an organization have a different view of what _______________ is.  This formed the core idea behind the notion of multiple perspectives in his framework.  (Correct answer:  "Architecture")

A few questions will be larger in scope:

What is your approach to transitioning from the BIM Vocabulary to a representative Subject Area Model?
(short answer)

You will be graded on whether you get the multiple choice and short answer questions right, and the depth of your reasoning on the short answer questions.