Certification Nugget: CLA - Certified LabVIEW Architect

[tst]

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If you look over on the Minneapolis users group on the community side you might just find a video of Tom Brass nailing the CLA in 2.5 hrs.  I was in the room failing my first CLD attempt at the time.

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I did look (and on Google). No Tom Bress video.

[JÞB]

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@tst wrote:

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If you look over on the Minneapolis users group on the community side you might just find a video of Tom Brass nailing the CLA in 2.5 hrs.  I was in the room failing my first CLD attempt at the time.

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I did look (and on Google). No Tom Bress video.

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https://decibel.ni.com/content/thread/13341?tstart=0

 Brass.  I do try to be honest up here

[tst]

Right. I figured it was a rare enough name in the CLA circles to be a typo.

Anyway, I did see that, but that's a CLD video, not a CLA one. You should probably put it in the CLD nugget.

[Jacobson-ni]

Building large applications is not something I have to do for my current job but is something that I am interested in learning (and may be important for future roles).

Would going through the prep for and taking the CLA be a good way to learn a lot of these basics and best practices or should it mostly be a way of confirming what you already know how to do?

[crossrulz]

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@Jacobson-ni wrote:
Would going through the prep for and taking the CLA be a good way to learn a lot of these basics and best practices or should it mostly be a way of confirming what you already know how to do?

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For me, it was more of a confirmation of what I already knew.  For others, they had to learn new architectures.

I knew there was a NI community out there that would be a good reference.  This is the best one I found.  Not sure if it was the one I was originally thinking about though: LabVIEW Development Best Practices

There are some threads on doing large scale programs.

[FabiolaDelaCueva]

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@crossrulz wrote:

NI Preparation Information
The NI exam e-Kit can be found here: NI Certified LabVIEW Architect (CLA) Exam Preparation Resources
I have also been told that the great @FabiolaDelaCueva has a great course specifically for the CLA. I know the queen of Delacor would not mind talking to you about it.

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Wow! Thanks for the plug, although some of the Delacor team members are wondering if they are just peasants 😄 I assure you they are not, we have a great team! I am just Fab 😉  (... and modest)

We have done coaching for the CLA exam. Most of it focus on figuring out what each person's LabVIEW style is and help them structure a strategy for the exam. At this level, I don't need to teach them LabVIEW, it is more how to do time management during the exam and go back to what you have heard me say before, if you are focusing on getting all the requirements implemented and an application running, you will fail!:

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@crossrulz wrote:

My Personal Recommendations to Candidates
Here is the major thing with the CLA: you are building a framework. Fabiola put it well when I heard her tell people "For the CLD, if the program works you will likely pass.  For the CLA, if the program works, you will likely fail." 

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I suggest that people read not the application requirements only but the first and second page of the exam, where what the grader is expecting of your exam is stated. I believe a lot of people skip that section, that is where it is outlined what components your framework should have like error handling, stopping, inter process communication, etc. This is regardless of what the actual application will do.

Regards, 

Fab

[thoult]

Thanks for this crossrulz et al - I'm sitting the CLA in three weeks, and have been reading around it as much as I can. Much of the advice elsewhere is vague and often of uncertain provenance, so it helps seeing someone familiar confirming some of the thoughts I've had.

Regarding situations where the CLA can mirror real life, I have one at the moment. I'm just starting out on a new project, where I'm the sole developer (as always). The process is pretty loosely defined so far, and I estimate it'll take somewhere in the region of a week's work, delivered in a few hours per week, just to discuss the requirements with the 'customer' (the product's technical manager). However, I know enough about the process and its requirements that I can start the architecture now, document it and comment enough of it that I can come back to it as we fill out precise requirements over time, and I get to narrow down hardware choices and the details for each module.

In lieu of having the time to sit a practice CLA exam, reviewing my skeleton architecture with my architect colleague has been about as helpful as anything else I can imagine.

[SteenSchmidt]

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@tst wrote:

If your proctor will allow you to connect a flash drive before the exam, you can use that to bring the VI along (and your ini file).

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That would be a violation of the exam rules, since no external code may be used to do the test. Even if the proctor allows it.

I must reiterate that reading such advise makes me devaluate these certifications even more. I understand people are just trying to help out, and for some getting a CLA can make or break your career. But it's perfectly possible to do these exams with no preparation whatsoever - or it should be in my opinion, as I actually think these exams are laid out to be doable within the allotted time if you have the expected experience. And most I see post here are even native English speakers (the exams don't come in my native language).

NI should take care not to undermine their certification programme in the effort to push as many through as possible. That will in turn hurt all who have spent time taking the exams.

/Steen

[SteenSchmidt]

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@tst wrote:

I feel this is a failure of the test. It presents a scenario which I do not run into in real life. I have never had a case where I needed to take requirements from an inaccessible customer and translate them in a short amount of time to an architecture which an inaccessible dev will work on. I think starting to work on the code is a fairly natural reaction in this case, and one which is hard to avoid. I understand why they did this, but I still think it makes the test flawed and it certainly increases your chances of failure if you're not aware of it.

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We are actually just now sitting two CLAs estimating a customer project where the process in parts is quite similar to a CLA exam. Not that we do a complete framework just now, but we did both interview the customer, and do not have the customer available just now. Nevertheless we have to make architecture and design decisions to estimate the project (these go into an accompanying prerequisites document), and we are both developers as well (hardly a day goes by in a calendar year where I do not program LabVIEW still), so we have a good understanding of the necessary effort to implement our design. But we can't implement it now, and we haven't decided yet who will end up implementing it (so the developer isn't available as such either).

This scenario isn't too uncommon for us, and a CLD-level person wouldn't stand a chance estimating such a project within reason.

Since I run into tasks like the one above fairly often I see where the CLA is justified. But I can't use a CLA with 2-3 years of active experience, even if they are able to pass the exam. I need a CLA to actually possess the skills to grasp the entire project in at least some detail: hardware (electrical, mechanical etc.), software, user roles, domain expertise, financial markers, management decision dynamics and so on.

/Steen

[tst]

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@SteenSchmidt wrote:

 but we did both interview the customer

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But that's the point - you didn't get a document, read it and immediately have to create an architecture in code. You talk to the customer, you see what their actual needs are, you might offer things they didn't think of, you make design decisions, you help with requirements documents, etc. All that usually happens before you touch LV. That doesn't mean that the test is very hard or unfair, but it does mean it can throw people off and set the "let's just write this" mode (happened to me).