Accreditation & Credibility

Benchmark Six Sigma is an Accredited Training Provider of Exemplar Global (formerly RABQSA), a globally recognized certification body and part of the ASQ (American Society for Quality) family.

Exemplar Global accreditation ensures consistent standards, credible assessments, and global acceptance — validating capability without replacing it.

Duration & Format

Live online, built around working professionals. One six-week batch: a mandatory one-hour live Foundation held immediately before your Week 1 session, four two-hour live core sessions in weeks 1–4 taught to the whole mixed-domain batch, and application to your own work in your two confirmed domains between sessions, with capstone vivas in weeks 5–6. Analytics adds a two-hour live primer on the Tuesday after launch; Business Applications adds two live build labs in weeks 5–6, with its viva shortly after week 6.

Expected commitment for the credential, live sessions plus application work: approximately 25–33 hours in total; 27–35 where one domain is Analytics; 30–40 where one is Business Applications. These ranges are provisional and are being validated against the first batches.

Live Online

Unique Value Proposition

AI Direction — a Category of Its Own (Dominant Advantage)

Turn your everyday AI use into a professional advantage.

You do not need to build AI. You need to direct it. CAIDA — Certified AI Direction Architect — occupies the universal professional capability between merely using AI and building AI systems. You decide what AI should do, what the work is for and what good looks like, what evidence and boundaries it needs, how the route is managed, and what checking is required before the result is relied upon. You remain accountable for the work. Learn to direct AI the way a film director directs: you don’t act or operate the camera, yet the film is yours. No code, no building.

“Architect” here means you architect how AI is directed in your own work, not the AI systems themselves. Designing and building AI solutions for others is a different credential, Certified AI Solution Architect (CAISA): a peer, not a level above.

Organized around how professionals create value — learning, analyzing, deciding, communicating, systematizing, building — not around tools that churn every quarter. And nothing stays theoretical: every capstone is built on genuine work you are accountable for. Employed, consulting, freelance, entrepreneurial or nonprofit work all qualify.

Tool-agnostic by design. Trainers demonstrate in tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and Gemini while teaching abilities that apply across them. You need access to at least one suitable generative-AI tool — a free plan is often enough — and you follow your own organisation’s rules on approved tools and information use. Business Applications normally also needs a second platform to build your tool in.

Taught Across Domains, Certified in Yours

Every CAIDA batch mixes domains on purpose. A case worked in one domain is carried into another, so you learn to recognise an ability as an ability, not as a recipe that only works in familiar territory.

Then you are certified only where you have shown it. Your credential records the named domains in which you applied the Eight Direction Abilities to real work and met the evidence standard: general AI Direction capability, supported by demonstrated application in at least two named domains.

Verified Evidence, Not Attendance

The credential rests on what you demonstrated, and anyone can check it. Every certificate carries a QR code that opens the authoritative online record, showing which domains you demonstrated and when. Your scores, feedback and confidential evidence stay in your private profile.

It is one credential with lifetime validity, updated as you add domains, with no separate badges.

The Eight Direction Abilities — DIRECT AI

One complete operating discipline, remembered as DIRECT AI:

• Delegate: decide what AI should and should not do, while ownership stays with you
• Intent: define the job, intended user, outcome and what good means
• Route: choose and sequence the route through the work
• Equip: provide the smallest sufficient set of relevant, authorised evidence, background and boundaries
• Course-correct: diagnose output, redirect intelligently and know when to stop
• Test: earn the right to rely on the result
• Apply: make the result useful at its real point of application
• Independent reuse: make successful direction repeatable by someone else

They group into four beats — Decide, Design, Drive and Deliver — and work as an interacting loop, not eight rigid steps. And the standard runs against the grain of how AI is usually taught. More prompts, more tools, more context and more iterations do not represent greater capability; better judgement about how much each piece of work deserves does.

Every Direction Record you submit is checked by your trainer against them, and every capstone is assessed on all eight. The abilities are introduced in Foundation, developed across all six domains in the mixed core, and applied in each of your two domains.

Responsible Direction Built In

Test before you rely. It runs through every session and every applied task: never rely on unverified output, never expose confidential data, never hand a consequential decision to AI. And asking the same AI to check its own output is review, not an independent test.

Responsibility is non-compensable. Six red lines govern the work:

• unauthorised information use;
• fabrication or material reliance without verification;
• uncontrolled delegation of consequential authority;
• materially harmful conduct or output;
• concealing AI involvement where disclosure is required;
• uncontrolled operational deployment.

A capstone that crosses any of them cannot pass until the issue is corrected, whatever the scores elsewhere.

One more threshold sits alongside them: you must be able to explain your output’s limitations, its residual risks, and the circumstances in which it should not be used. Strong work everywhere else cannot compensate for its absence.

Reusable Skills That Compound

Each of your domains leaves you with a named, reusable AI Skill — a structured capability package, not a saved prompt. Each one carries:

• its purpose and intended user;
• the inputs and context it needs;
• the direction steps themselves;
• the decision rules and human approval points;
• its validation checks and safeguards;
• worked examples;
• an owner and version.

A Skill is tool-agnostic by definition. The same package can be implemented as a Claude Skill, a Custom GPT, a Copilot or Gemini setup, project instructions, or a documented AI-enabled procedure. What is assessed is the reusable capability, not the container it happens to live in.

And the test is not that it works for you. For your credential, at least one of your Skills must be cold-run by someone else: a colleague runs it from your instructions, on real material, without you available to guide them. That is what turns personal capability into team capability.

Built Around Your Role and Your Work

After you enrol: nine questions about your work, none of them about AI. Your personal AI Direction Report maps where your time goes and proposes a provisional pair of domains, plus one more worth considering, with the reasoning drawn from your own answers. These are hypotheses, not a verdict. Foundation shows you all six domains, and you confirm or change your pair afterwards.

Before you enrol, you can see the method demonstrated live at the Free Live Awareness Session: 60 minutes, every Saturday evening, for anyone considering CAIDA.

Enrolment is open continuously, and a new batch normally begins every three weeks, alternating Saturday and Sunday. Complete the Diagnostic before Foundation, attend Foundation live immediately before your Week 1 session, and your six-week batch is under way. No technical background is required — from operations and finance to consulting, HR and leadership.

Live Sessions Under Direct Facilitation

Nine hours of scheduled live teaching: a one-hour Foundation and four two-hour core sessions, taught to the whole mixed-domain batch. Each core session runs a live demonstration, then critique of anonymised participant Direction Records, with cases carried across domains. Analytics adds a two-hour live primer. Business Applications adds two two-hour build labs of supervised construction in weeks 5 and 6.

Watch AI directed live on real work like yours, then have your own direction trails critiqued against the Eight Direction Abilities. Across the core weeks, every participant receives detailed individual feedback on at least one submission in each confirmed domain.

Every capstone is pre-evaluated offline by your trainer and confirmed in a mandatory live viva, scheduled when your evidence is ready.

Mandatory Live Online Foundation

One live online hour, held immediately before your Week 1 session. It covers:

• the Eight Direction Abilities;
• a trainer demonstration of a complete direction cycle, end to end;
• the six Responsible Direction red lines, with worked examples of how each one fails a capstone;
• the six domains, in enough depth for you to confirm your pair.

Foundation carries a mandatory knowledge check, automatically scored. You pass at 80%, with every Responsible Direction question correct.

• The red-line questions must be cleared before your first application submission.
• The full check must be passed before Week 2.
• You receive structured feedback and one reassessment opportunity.
• A short, unscored self-assessment helps you calibrate where you start.
• Foundation scores support your learning and never appear on your credential.

Live attendance is required; there is no recording route. If you miss Foundation, you join the next batch, without using your free transfer. Foundation must be passed before any capstone is accepted — it is the gate to the credential, not a warm-up.

Your Work as the Project

Application tasks are drawn from your own work. Your homework is your work, and there is no simulated case study anywhere in the program.

In each confirmed domain you develop one substantial live application, built through four staged Direction Records. Each is submitted through the Academy 48 hours before the next core session; Week 4’s is due with your capstone. Each record shows how you directed the work: what you delegated, what you equipped AI with, what you tested, and what you’d do differently. Selected records are critiqued in the following session.

You finish each domain with a real deliverable, a named reusable AI Skill, and — where the work supports it — a measured before-and-after. Outcomes, not notes.

Personal Diagnostic & AI Direction Report

The Diagnostic is included in your enrolment and completed after you enrol, before Foundation: nine questions about your work, none of them about AI. Your personal AI Direction Report maps where your time goes and identifies plausible areas of leverage. It proposes a provisional pair of domains, plus one more worth considering, each explained with reasoning drawn from your own answers.

Every figure in the report is one you supplied. It maps them and points to where the leverage may sit; it adds no estimates, projections or percentages of its own. It is developmental guidance, not a competence score, and you confirm or change your pair after Foundation.

AI helps interpret your answers and generate the report. The questions never ask for confidential figures, client names or personal data, and nothing identifiable is used in teaching or marketing without your explicit permission.

Open Clinics, Community & Ongoing Access

A monthly open clinic with direct facilitator access, for current participants and alumni, so guidance doesn’t end at certification. It is also a natural venue for cold-running your Skills. Your credential requires at least one Skill to be run by someone other than you, from your instructions alone, and the clinic gives you a tester and a setting for it.

You also get:

• peer batches across industries;
• an alumni community;
• a private capability profile in the Academy holding your evidence, feedback and progress.

Public verification shows the domains you have demonstrated and when.

Certified AI Direction Architect (CAIDA) Credential

Awarded when you have demonstrated real work in two domains: capstones from your own work, each assessed on all eight abilities and confirmed in a live viva. The credential requires:

• the completed Diagnostic;
• a passed Foundation assessment;
• live attendance at the common core, subject to the one recorded recovery, and at any required domain-specific sessions;
• a Demonstrated capstone and viva in each of two domains;
• evidence that at least one capstone was used in authentic, accountable real-world work;
• at least one reusable Skill cold-run by another person;
• no unresolved Responsible Direction, authenticity or verification concern.

One credential, progressively updated.

• After your first demonstrated domain, your private capability profile may show that domain and CAIDA: In Progress.
• After the second, the credential is issued and you hold the designation Certified AI Direction Architect.
• Every further domain is added to the same credential under the same permanent ID, with earlier achievements intact.
• There are no separate module badges, sub-certificates or aggregate distinctions.

Lifetime validity. Every certificate carries a QR code opening the authoritative online record in Accredible. The record shows both what you demonstrated and your current-practice status:

• Current: all applicable Practice Updates are complete.
• Update Available: a material update has been released, and you are within its six-month window.
• Practice Update Overdue: that window has passed.

Your credential remains lifetime valid throughout; the status reports currency of practice, not validity.

Learning Outcomes

Direct AI Without Building It

Learn the complete cycle of AI Direction — DIRECT AI:

• decide what AI should and should not do;
• set the intent and what good means;
• choose the route;
• equip AI with the right evidence and boundaries;
• course-correct, and know when to stop;
• test before you rely;
• apply the result at its real point of use;
• make the approach reusable, so someone else can repeat it.

Eight abilities for getting AI to work to your standard, on whichever suitable AI tool you use, without writing a line of code — and you apply them to your own work as you learn.

Develop a Capability That Travels With Your Career

AI Direction sits between merely using AI and building AI systems — the universal professional capability in the middle. It is a business role rather than a technical job title, and it is designed to multiply expertise you already have rather than replace it. Whether you work in operations, finance, consulting, quality, HR or leadership, the Certified AI Direction Architect (CAIDA) credential answers “what do you want to be known for?” with assessed work from your own practice rather than a course completion.

What Participants Set Out to Achieve

Each domain is built around a business outcome you pursue on your own work. What you achieve depends on the work you choose, your role and your organisation’s conditions. These are the goals the program trains for, not results it guarantees:

• Reclaim hours from recurring work, measured against your own baseline where you take the Workflow domain, rather than against a claimed average
• Make better-examined decisions, with AI as a rigorous thinking partner and the decision staying yours
• Produce communication and analysis that survive scrutiny — claims traced to sources, calculations independently validated
• Redesign recurring work so the improvement sustains itself, with ownership assigned and exceptions handled

Perfect for Non-Technical Professionals

No programming background is needed, and no prior AI experience is assumed. The Diagnostic you complete after enrolling asks nine questions about your work, and none of them is about AI.

You work on your own real work, in a suitable AI tool you have access to, with concepts explained through your own examples. Whatever your current AI habit is — daily user or complete beginner — it’s a starting point, not a requirement.

Graduate With Real Working Assets

Your two domains determine what you leave with. Across the six domains, these are the deliverables; you produce the ones that match your two, plus your reusable Skills:

• Evidence-backed research briefs, with material claims traced to source
• Reproducible analyses and decision-ready insight products, independently validated
• Decision records that survive scrutiny — options, criteria, adversarial challenge, ownership
• High-stakes communications with influence plans, delivered and reviewed
• Redesigned recurring workflows, run in practice with a measured before-and-after
• A bounded working tool that at least one other person uses to complete a real task
• Named, reusable AI Skills, with at least one across your two domains cold-run by someone else, from your instructions alone

You graduate with deliverables from your own work, not theoretical labs. That requires genuine work you’re accountable for. Employed, consulting, freelance, entrepreneurial or nonprofit work all qualify; a fictional case study does not.

Lifelong Professional Advantage

• Direct AI confidently on work that doesn’t exist yet — tools churn, the abilities don’t
• Build and share team-level AI Skills that colleagues can run without you
• Lead responsible AI adoption with judgment, not hype — red lines, disclosure, and decisions that stay human
• Add further domains to the same credential as your role evolves, and keep your practice current through periodic Practice Updates

Move into AI-forward leadership — or into CAISA, a peer craft for building AI solutions rather than a step up

Topics Covered

Topics Covered

CAIDA runs as one six-week batch that mixes all six domains. Everyone takes Foundation and the four live core sessions together, then applies the method in two domains of their choice. All six domains are peers: no prerequisites between them, no fixed order, and any pair permitted.

Foundation (mandatory — one live online hour, immediately before your Week 1 session)

• The complete discipline of directing AI — DIRECT AI: Delegate, Intent, Route, Equip, Course-correct, Test, Apply, Independent reuse. The eight abilities are taught as one interacting loop, not eight rigid steps, with a trainer demonstrating a full direction cycle end to end.
• The six Responsible Direction red lines that govern everything after it, with worked examples of how each one fails a capstone: test before you rely, protect confidential data, keep consequential decisions human.
• The six domains in enough depth to choose, then your domain decision: you confirm or change your provisional pair by the Monday after your Week 1 session.
• An automatically scored knowledge check (80% to pass, with every Responsible Direction question correct) and one reassessment opportunity. Foundation scores never appear on your credential.

The common core — four live sessions, with the whole batch together

• Week 1 — Demonstrate and begin: a live demonstration of directing patterns on real work, then guided application to your own, and your first application task set.
• Week 2 — Critique and improve: anonymised participant Direction Records dissected against the rubric, ability by ability — where the intent was clear, where the testing failed.
• Week 3 — Stretch and prepare: whole Direction Records critiqued end to end, harder patterns, reusable-Skill development and capstone preparation.
• Week 4 — Confirm and consolidate: capstones due by the end of the week, at least 72 hours before your viva.
• Weeks 5–6 — Vivas and completion, scheduled when your evidence is ready, plus the Business Applications build labs.

Each case is carried from one domain into another, so you learn the ability, not just the example.

Then your two domains, proposed by your AI Direction Report and confirmed by you after Foundation:

Domain 1 — AI Direction: Research & Knowledge

• Frame research questions and evidence standards, direct deep research with a defensible source strategy, and work through long documents with full traceability.
• Synthesize and reconcile conflicting evidence, get up to speed on unfamiliar domains, and build reusable Skills — from the Evidence-Backed Research Brief to the Get-Up-To-Speed Tutor.

Domain 2 — AI Direction: Analytics

• Move from a real business question to defensible insight: metric definitions, data readiness and provenance, method and assumption choices, and interpretation that separates what the data shows from what you infer. A two-hour live primer on the Tuesday after launch levels entry data literacy first.
• Validate and reproduce every material calculation, tell the analytical story visually, and build Skills like the Performance & Variance Analyzer and Insight-to-Action Brief.

Domain 3 — AI Direction: Problem Solving & Decision Making

• Frame and decompose real problems, explore cause hypotheses with evidence, generate genuine options, and set decision criteria before scoring — with AI as a rigorous thinking partner, never the decision-maker.
• Red-team your own conclusion with premortems and adversarial challenge, then produce a decision record that survives scrutiny — with Skills like the Cause Hypothesis Explorer and Premortem & Scenario Challenger.

Domain 4 — AI Direction: Influence & High-Stakes Communication

• Define what your audience must understand, trust, decide or do; build message architecture before drafting; and keep an authentic voice that sounds like you at your best.
• Adapt one message across stakeholders, channels and live conversations — ethically, with verified facts — using Skills like the Storyline Architect and Stakeholder Message Adapter.

Domain 5 — AI Direction: Workflow & Productivity Systems

• Find the recurring work worth redesigning, map its real current state, and divide the work deliberately between human and AI — eliminate first, orchestrate last.
• Handle exceptions, approvals and sensitive information; measure the before and after; and build systems like the Inbox or Request Triage System and the Meeting-to-Actions System that keep the time reclaimed.

Domain 6 — AI Direction: Business Applications

• Scope and build small working tools — trackers, dashboards, approval flows — without becoming a developer, including the judgment of when not to build. Two live build labs in weeks 5 and 6 give you supervised construction time.
• Design data, rules and permissions; test exceptions and misuse; deploy, hand over and own the tool, so it survives you stepping away.
• Scope stays within four conditions:
  • you build, own and maintain it alone;
  • its users are named individuals;
  • it runs safely without a governance artefact;
  • you can restore the manual process if it fails.

Beyond that is CAISA territory.

Between sessions: application in both confirmed domains. Each domain gets one live application, built through staged Direction Records due 48 hours before the next core session, with Week 4’s due alongside your capstone. Most of your commitment sits here: roughly 8–12 hours per domain across the batch, including capstone and viva.

Your capstone is a real deliverable, assessed on all eight abilities against a four-level scale: 0 Not evidenced, 1 Developing, 2 Demonstrated, 3 Strong. To pass:

• every ability must reach at least Demonstrated;
• your domain’s Apply floor — its real-use requirement — must be met;
• no Responsible Direction concern may remain unresolved.

Work assessed as Not Yet Demonstrated gets specific feedback and one included resubmission. If it still falls short, you receive an individual development plan and can re-demonstrate the domain in a later batch, without repeating Foundation or the core.

Target Audience (Professional Roles, Experience Level)

• Ideal for every professional whose week contains information to master, data to interpret, decisions to make, messages that must land, work that repeats, or something a small shared tool would fix. That covers consultants, analysts, finance and operations professionals, quality and excellence practitioners, HR, sales, trainers, and managers at every level. It is equally open to entrepreneurs, business owners and independent consultants, who apply the method to their own accountable work.

  No technical background is required. After you enrol, your nine-question Diagnostic proposes a provisional pair of domains where directed AI is likely to give you leverage first, and you confirm your choice after Foundation, so the program fits your role rather than asking you to fit it. It is especially natural for Six Sigma and process-improvement alumni ready to add AI Direction to their craft: Problem Solving & Decision Making bridges belt thinking and directed AI.

Prerequisites (Required/Recommended Knowledge)

• Prerequisites (Required/Recommended Knowledge)

  Basic digital fluency. No coding, no programming, no technical AI background, and no prior AI experience needed. Your current ChatGPT habit, whatever it is, is a starting point, not a requirement.

  Two things you do need:

  • access to at least one suitable generative-AI tool, where a free plan is often enough;
  • genuine work you’re accountable for, to apply the method to.

  Your coursework, submissions, feedback and capability record live in the CAIDA Academy, which runs in the browser with nothing to install and is included in your fee.

  Each domain also has a practical requirement, so check the two you are considering:

  • Research & Knowledge: a permitted route for documents if your employer restricts uploads, identified before Week 1
  • Analytics: a real dataset you are authorised to use, or a sanitised extract, identified before Week 1
  • Problem Solving & Decision Making: a live decision or problem you own or materially influence, and access to its actual decision owner
  • Influence & High-Stakes Communication: a genuine upcoming communication with an identifiable audience, and three to five examples of your own best writing before Week 2
  • Workflow & Productivity Systems: a recurring workflow that will actually run during the batch, roughly monthly or more often, and the standing to change it or the agreement of whoever has it
  • Business Applications: a named second user for a real task, authorisation for the data, and a platform to build in beyond your AI tool

  On sequencing: enrol first — in CAIDA, not in individual domains. The Diagnostic follows enrolment and must be completed before Foundation, and Foundation is held live immediately before your Week 1 session.

Recommended Prior Courses (if applicable)

None required — Foundation assumes nothing.

Interactive Components (Practice projects, Case studies, Quizzes)

• Live demonstrations of AI direction on real work, drawn from participant Diagnostics with explicit permission and anonymised before use
• Four live core sessions for the whole mixed-domain batch, with cases carried from one domain into another
• Weekly application on your own work in both confirmed domains, submitted as a structured Direction Record through the Academy 48 hours before the next session
• A trainer check on every submission, with selected anonymised records examined in depth in the following live critique; across the core weeks, every participant gets detailed individual feedback on at least one submission in each confirmed domain
• Capstone submitted by the end of Week 4, at least 72 hours before your viva, for offline trainer pre-evaluation, then your mandatory live viva. Business Applications capstones are due at the end of week 6, with the viva normally within two weeks.
• At least one reusable Skill cold-run by another person — a credential requirement, with the open clinic as a natural venue
• A monthly open clinic with direct facilitator Q&A, open to current participants and alumni

Support Services (Forums, Technical Support, Post-training guidance)

• Facilitator support via dedicated forums and the monthly open clinic, which stays open to you as an alumnus after certification.
• Guidance in whichever suitable AI tool you work in — ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini or another. CAIDA doesn’t mandate a provider or include commercial AI licences; you follow your own organisation’s rules on approved tools and information use.
• Peers and records: cross-industry peer batches, an alumni community, and a private Academy capability profile holding your evidence, feedback and progress, with public verification confirming the domains you’ve demonstrated and when.
• Recordings and recovery. Live participation is central to CAIDA.
  • One of the four common-core sessions can be recovered if unavoidably missed: you receive the recording of that live session, the session resources and a short make-up application.
  • A second missed core session means continuing with the next batch.
  • Foundation, the Analytics primer and the Business Applications build labs are live-only. Missing Foundation or a build lab means attending it with a later batch. Missing the primer moves Analytics to the next batch while your other domain continues.
• Attendance expectations. You’re expected to attend Foundation and all four core sessions live, plus the primer or build labs if your domains include them. The viva is mandatory and live; a missed viva is rescheduled, never waived.

Certification Earned

Certified AI Direction Architect (CAIDA), awarded after Foundation and two demonstrated domains. Holders carry the designation Certified AI Direction Architect.

The credential requires:

• the completed Diagnostic;
• a passed Foundation assessment;
• live attendance at the common core (subject to one recorded recovery) and at any required domain-specific sessions;
• a Demonstrated capstone and mandatory live viva in each of two domains;
• evidence that at least one capstone was used in authentic, accountable real-world work;
• at least one reusable Skill cold-run by another person;
• no unresolved Responsible Direction, authenticity or verification concern.

Value to Employers (Efficiency, Cost Reduction, Quality Improvement)

Operational Efficiency

• Target the hours locked in recurring work — status reporting, review preparation, inbox and meeting follow-through — measured against the team’s own baseline where the Workflow domain is taken
• Aim for shorter turnaround on research, analysis and first drafts, at a standard that survives checking
• Improve consistency through shared, reusable AI Skills another team member can run without the author present
• Redesign workflows built to hold their gains — exceptions handled, ownership assigned, maintenance defined

The intent is added capacity from the people and tools you already have. What any individual achieves depends on the work they choose and your organisation’s own conditions.

Cost Reduction

• Tool-agnostic: participants work in whichever suitable generative-AI tool they can access, and a free plan is often sufficient. CAIDA doesn’t mandate a provider or include commercial AI licences.
• Small internal tools built and owned in-house, within clear scope limits, without a development budget
• Less rework as a working goal — fewer repeated cycles on documents, analyses and reports
• Every capstone is a real deliverable from the participant’s own work, produced during the program rather than after it

The return, where it materialises, is visible during the program rather than at the end of a transformation project.

Quality Improvement

• Analyses that are reproducible and independently validated; research with claims traced to sources
• Decisions documented, adversarially challenged, and owned by accountable humans
• Communication that is accurate, audience-fit, and free of AI-generated fabrication
• Responsible AI use enforced by non-negotiable red lines — confidential data protected, AI involvement disclosed, consequential decisions kept human

These are assessment requirements, not aspirations: a capstone that crosses a red line cannot pass until the issue is corrected, whatever the scores elsewhere. The aim is stronger organisational reliability and lower exposure to the risks untrained AI adoption carries.

Career Goals (Roles you can aim for post-certification)

Roles Certified AI Direction Architects may aim for — directions the capability opens, not employment outcomes the program guarantees: AI Adoption Lead, Internal AI Champion / AI Consultant, AI Productivity & Workflow Lead, AI-Augmented Business Analyst, Research & Insights Lead, Decision Support Specialist, Operations Excellence Leader, Process Improvement Manager (AI-Enabled), Communications & Proposals Lead, Digital Transformation Lead, Team AI Capability Owner, AI Direction Coach, AI Application Coach.

Bundled Programs (Packages or pathways that include this course)

Suggested Sequence

• 1. Optionally, join the Free Live Awareness Session — 60 minutes, every Saturday evening — to see the method demonstrated live before you decide.
  2. Enrol in CAIDA — not in individual domains — and choose a Saturday or Sunday batch. Enrolment is open continuously.
  3. Complete the Diagnostic after enrolling: nine questions about your work, and an AI Direction Report proposing a provisional pair of domains.
  4. Attend Foundation live, immediately before your Week 1 session, and confirm your two domains by the Monday after Week 1.
  5. Complete your six-week batch — four live core sessions, application in both domains, capstones and vivas — and become a Certified AI Direction Architect.
  6. Add further domains whenever your role evolves. Each is delivered through a later batch, without repeating Foundation or the core, and added to the same credential.
  7. Drawn to building AI solutions? CAISA — Certified AI Solution Architect — is the peer credential for building, not a step up from directing.
  8. Combine with your Lean Six Sigma path. CAIDA pairs naturally with Green Belt and Black Belt, within the broader Business Excellence journey; Problem Solving & Decision Making is built as the bridge.

Return on Investment (Salary increase potential, Recognition)

Acquire the Universal AI Skill Without Pausing Your Career

Gain the discipline of AI Direction in one six-week batch: a weekly two-hour live core session plus application on your own work. Expect approximately:

• 25–33 hours in total for the credential, where both domains are standard;
• 27–35 hours with Analytics;
• 30–40 hours with Business Applications.

These ranges are provisional and are being validated against the first batches. No career break, no technical retraining.

Because every assignment comes from your own work, the time you invest goes into deliverables your work needed anyway rather than into practice exercises.

Recognition That Shows Its Evidence

Public verification confirms which domains you demonstrated and when, through a QR code on the certificate itself.

“Certified AI Direction Architect” is a professional designation rather than a course completion — something to put on LinkedIn that answers “what do you want to be known for?” with assessed work behind it.

Impact You Can Aim For During the Program, Not After It

• Reclaim hours from recurring work, measured against your own baseline — the Workflow domain’s own requirement
• Turn around research, analysis and communication at a standard that survives scrutiny
• Put a redesigned workflow or working tool into real use in your team
• Strengthen decisions with documented, adversarially challenged reasoning

Every capstone is real work, and at least one must be put to authentic use, so your manager and stakeholders can see the deliverables while the batch is still running.

Before You Enrol

Calendar — launch batch (Sunday)

• Sun 25 Oct — Foundation, 2:30–3:30 PM IST (live, required), then Week 1, 3:30–5:30 PM IST
• Tue 27 Oct — Analytics primer, 7:30 PM IST (required only if you confirm Analytics)
• Sun 1 Nov — Week 2
• Sun 8 Nov — no session (Diwali)
• Sun 15 Nov — Week 3
• Sun 22 Nov — Week 4; capstones due
• Sun 29 Nov and Sun 6 Dec — Weeks 5–6: vivas and completion; Business Applications build labs
• Next batch (Saturday): Foundation and Week 1 on Sat 21 Nov

Commitment. Approximately 25–33 hours for the credential (27–35 with Analytics, 30–40 with Business Applications), covering live sessions plus application on your own work. The ranges are provisional and being validated against the first batches.

Domains. You don’t choose at enrolment. The Diagnostic follows enrolment and advises. You confirm your two domains after Foundation, by the end of the Monday after your Week 1 session. If you can’t find suitable live work for two domains in the window, your application can move to a later batch at no charge.

Fees.

• Standard CAIDA enrolment: INR 52,700.
• Business Applications supplement: INR 15,500, payable only if you confirm Business Applications after Foundation, because that domain adds two live build-lab sessions.
• Fees are base fees; GST is charged in addition.
• One free transfer to a later batch is permitted.

Foundation. A required live session with no recording route. Missing it means joining a later batch.

Core attendance. Live participation is central. One of the four core sessions can be recovered from its recording if unavoidably missed; other required live sessions follow the recovery and rollover rules above.

Certification is by demonstration. A domain can be recorded Not Yet Demonstrated. One resubmission is included, and re-demonstration is available in a later batch, normally weeks, not months, away.

Business Applications timing. The pathway uses all six weeks of instruction, so there is no completion time inside the batch. Its capstone is due at the close of week 6, and the viva follows shortly after.

Domain-specific sessions. The Analytics primer and the Business Applications build labs cannot be recovered by recording, and missing one may mean attending with a later batch.

Capacity. Limited, and enrolment may close once it is reached.

Platform. Business Applications normally requires a second platform to build in.

Capacity Limits

Capacity is limited because every participant receives individual feedback, coaching, offline capstone pre-evaluation and a mandatory live viva. Enrolment in a batch may close before it looks full, depending on the mix of domains confirmed, so enrol early to secure the next batch rather than the one after.

PDUs

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