For those who couldn’t make this meet-up, here’s a summary of what was discussed (or at least some of it, it was one of those organic discussions that took it’s own path, and I don’t have a lot of notes as I was too busy actively listening or blabbering making insightful contributions).
The basic question was around: how are architects perceived, and what is our “brand”? We tried not to focus on specific types of architect too much (i.e. enterprise vs solution), although we tended to focused on solution architecture.
This raised initial discussion around:
- What does it mean in the context of Agile – which we decided to come back to, but then didn’t.
- Distinguishing between architects and architecture – the latter will always be needed regardless of who does it and what they are called.
- The correlation between governance and architecture – where there’s a lack of good governance there is often a lack of good architecture or appreciation of architecture in general.
This led to a significant discussion around “can we define the benefits of (solution) architecture, and the risks of not doing it”? Whilst this is hardly a new problem it is one that we really need to put to bed. The obvious challenge is not merely to define it, but to do so in a way that is broadly and easily understood.
We also discussed what would logically follow next – assuming you had the ideal definition, what would you do with it ? But unfortunately the conversation took a turn and I don’t have any notes. From memory, there weren’t any major epiphany moments arising directly from this. Sad.
People Who Do Similar Things
The topic then came up of comparing what architects did with people who do similar things.
One of the attendees mentioned her brother, whom is effectively an architect but doesn’t like to call himself one, but unfortunately we didn’t (or weren’t able to) dig into exactly why that was.
There was also a connection made between the role of a program manager and an architect. Personally I can see how this might be the case in terms of seniority and leadership, but in other areas the correlation is much less clear. Perhaps it is such that in some cases a program manager takes on some architectural leadership responsibilities when there is an absence of architects or effective governance.
Later on, this broad topic came back with a comparison to service design. The widely agreed takeaway was that architects should add this to their general toolbox, the toolbox we all have of skills and ideas that we get from various places but don’t always get to use “for real”. Service design feels like one of those – something it’s worth knowing a bit about – just enough to be dangerous.
Focus of the Solution Architect: Technical or Business?
We discussed the focus of the solution architect role – is/should it’s focus be technical or business? There’s no doubt SA’s need a foot in each camp, but is one aspect inherently more dominant than the other? And because this is about brand, i.e. perception, I asked people to consider not just how they see this for themselves, but also how they think non-architects perceive it.
I asked everyone to think about a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 was all business and 100 was all technical. I then asked them to silently (in their own heads) come up with the answers to those two questions. I then drew the scales up on the board and invited people (without changing their minds) to put their scores up.
As you can see, people see solution architecture as a largely technical role, and their perception of how they think others perceive it is similar but not identical.
It makes me wonder about engineering architects (people who architect buildings, etc) – do they have a similar or comparable issue with brand? Are they perceived as being largely technical, and is this how they want to be perceived?
It Ain’t What They Call You, It’s What You Answer to
We then got on to names – what do we call ourselves. Sadly the list wasn’t very long and we didn’t really push past the obvious, but it was an interesting enough starting discussion for a Friday afternoon.
What’s wrong with “architect” – well nothing in my book, I still think it’s a useful term, and I still often compare myself to a building architect when describing what I do to a lay-person. But that didn’t get in the way of our discussion.
“Digital Strategist” came up, but then we realised that’s probably taken. Later someone adroitly evolved this to “Digital Capability Landscaping”.
“Principle _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _” made it up onto the whiteboard, a brave start but leaves just a tad too much to the imagination. Typical architect, right? In my notes I wrote “(domain)”, implying the name of the domain you’re a principle in is the key – but what are those domains? perhaps it goes back to the technology vs business discussion – do you go for a technology or business domain?
Someone suggested “Technologist”, and “Solution Design Thinking”.
I’m quite proud of one I dreamt up later: “Trade-off Merchant”.
The conversation then took a turn when someone suggested we pull up Google Trends with “enterprise architect” and “design thinking”. We then played around with other terms. I must admit I was pleased to see solution architect is still trending upwards. What is Google Trends? see Wikipedia.
Final Tidbit
Someone mentioned a neat little resource: http://openmodels.org/
“The openmodels.org website hosts the Open Model Initiative, a project to collaboratively develop enterprise reference models for everyone to copy, use, modify, and (re-)distribute in an open and public process.”
The WSAF would also like to thank Middleware NZ for hosting us and providing drinks and nibbles.
Were you an attendee? Got anything to add to my semi-random collection of notes? Add a comment 🙂
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