What does an architect need to be successful?
Communications skills: both in writing and verbally. these are the skills that software architects use to communicate both the vision of the solution but also the implementation of that solution.
Leadership: There have been a number of initiatives in the world around this. For years organizations built teams of architects, led by architects. The feeling was that the architect manager would know the problems and concerns of the architect employees. Many companies are heading away from this – which is a huge mistake. Architects managing architects is a critical component of a successful architecture organization. The big gotcha is the managing architect has to have truly been a practicing architect at one time. I’ve been managed by architects before who had titles but no clue what architecture was.
Value driven solutions: Architects must understand the business requirements that lead to their solution being successful. This means not just knowing the specific problem being solved but actually understanding the business context of the problem. This leads back to communication skills, you may be selling against “the way things are.” Some business problems have been solved the same way forever. Therefore changing that solution takes some serious communication skills.
More to come…
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