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In a recent post, I looked at the topic of IT architecture from the perspective of what it is and why it’s not all about technology. For brevity, I decided to hold off on the next logical step, which developing the associated skills. So now it’s time to revisit the topic.

What skills does an Architect need?

In my first post, I made the distinction between Technical, Solution and Enterprise Architects and it’s clear that the skills, experience and knowledge will vary as across roles. There are some common things we can look at though, including:

• Industry skills frameworks.
• Formal certifications.
• Other skills and knowledge.

It’s quite common to talk about T-shaped individuals, as they grow out of their domain expertise and gain some breadth. An Architect really does need to be more than T-shaped. They need to know a little bit about a lot of things – to be comb-shaped. If it’s not immediately clear what I mean, imagine a comb, with each tooth representing some knowledge on a different topic.

Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA)

Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) claims to be “the global skills and competency framework for a digital world”. I’m not a fan. In my opinion, it’s overly wordy and feels like it was designed by committee. It’s also true that part of the reason I chose to leave a previous employer was a decision about SFIA grading, so I may be bitter.

My current employer also uses SFIA, and I can see the advantages when selling into the UK public sector. And I do have to concede that the SFIA skills definitions are actually useful when defining Solution Architect and Enterprise Architect roles:

• Solution Architecture (ARCH).
• Enterprise and Business Architecture (STPL)

It’s interesting that Enterprise and Business Architecture is labelled STPL. Perhaps it was called something like Strategic Planning in the past? That would be very appropriate (although Strategic Planning is labelled ITSP… so who knows).

There are other skills that may be useful for an architect. Candidates include:

• Business Analysis (BUAN).
• Change Implementation Planning and Management (CIPM).
• Systems Design (DESN).
• Emerging Technology Monitoring (EMRG).
• Enterprise IT Governance (GOVN).
• Strategic Planning (ITSP).
• Requirements Definition and Management (REQM).

And, depending on the organisation (e.g. working for a service provider, rather than in-house), maybe Consultancy (CNSL) too.

But this is where SFIA falls down. It’s so broad and encompassing that we don’t know where to stop: IT Management (ITMG)? Innovation (INOV)? Information Security (SCTY)? We could spend forever assessing people against many skills, but does it really move us forwards?

What SFIA does though, is provide a reference for what these terms mean and some pointers of what to expect at different levels.

Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Professional Capability Framework

Because we can never have too many standards, the UK Government came up with another framework for defining roles and the skills that are needed to perform them. That framework is known as DDaT – the Digital, Data and Technology Professional Capability Framework. Unlike, SFIA, DDaT is quite light, but possibly more relevant to the “digital” world.

DDaT doesn’t define a Solution Architect or an Enterprise Architect. Instead, it further muddies the water by defining various levels of Technical Architect, as well as Data Architect, Network Architect, and Security Architect. It also has a role of Technical Specialist Architect which seems to be some kind of ill-defined catch-all. I would suggest that the DDaT Technical Specialist Architect is some sort of specialist and probably not an Architect!

The “value” of certifications

Certifications are not everything, but they can help demonstrate having achieved a certain level of knowledge/experience. It’s worth noting that certifications are important to managed service partners as they are a factor in the partner competencies that a company holds. For some roles, they may also be important at an individual level, but they become less so as we tread the Architect development path.

Any technical certifications required for an architecture role will depend on context. The team I lead works predominantly with clients who have significant investments in Microsoft technology. For this reason, I ask every Architect (at all levels) to study for and pass all of the Microsoft Fundamentals series of exams.

At the time of writing there are six exams:

• Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900).
• Microsoft 365 Fundamentals (MS-900).
• Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals (PL-900).
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fundamentals (MB-901) – due for retirement in June 2021.
• Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals (DP-900).
• Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900).

A seventh exam is in beta:

• Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Fundamentals (SC-900).

Some team members may have other certifications, but this is the base level. If I led an architecture practice working with clients who had a different focus, the list might have been focused on Amazon Web Services (AWS) or another technology stack entirely.

It’s also helpful to have awareness of competing technologies. In my case, I want the Microsoft-focused Architects to also have a foundational knowledge of AWS. That’s why I became an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CCP).

But this is where the technical list ends. There is a Microsoft certification named Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert but I consider it to be an oxymoron. It is my experience that the exams that lead to the award of this certification focus too much on detailed knowledge of Azure (the expert part) and have very little to do with architecture. They have breadth and depth within a single domain and in order to maintain the knowledge, it would be necessary to spend a lot of time working with the technology. That is certainly valuable in a technical role but it is not solution architecture (as discussed in my previous post).

Whilst the BCS has some examples of solution architecture certifications, they require attendance of formal training, which drives up the cost considerably. In fairness, there is a self-study option but it has no published learning path – just a reading list. Aside from these, I’ve struggled to identify good solution architecture certifications (I’m open to suggestions) but there is lots of reading that can be done.

One such area is around enterprise integration patterns but it’s worth absorbing the contents of the major cloud providers’ Architecture Centers too:

• Azure Architecture Center.
• AWS Architecture Center.

It’s also worth gaining some experience in other domains – for example, IT Service Management. This is why I have included ITIL Foundation certification on the development path for my team. I’m also considering whether a Business Analysis certification might be worthwhile, as well as knowledge of something like Lean Six Sigma.

And then there’s knowledge of Enterprise Architecture frameworks. It’s now 9 years since I took my TOGAF exam and I’ve not really had much opportunity to deploy that knowledge. Far more useful has been building out a set of artefacts around Svyatoslav Kotusev (@Kotusev)’s Enterprise Architecture on a Page.

I was also a Chartered IT Professional (CITP) for a while. Unfortunately, I found that it was not recognised or required by clients and it offered few, if any, benefits. It cost me quite a lot (both to become certified and for the ongoing fees). I couldn’t justify it to myself, so why expect my employer to pay? For that reason, I let it lapse.

It’s probably clear by now that I have mixed feelings about the value of certification for Architects. It can certainly help in some areas and it can demonstrate some knowledge (literally, getting the badge). But, for a Solution or Enterprise Architect, I’d be more interested to hear about their methods and approaches than the certifications they hold.

Other skills and knowledge

Soft skills are critical to success as an Architect and these are wide-ranging. First on the list is excellent written and verbal communication skills. The Architect needs to be able to present confidently, to a wide audience – both technical and non-technical. They need to forge relationships, manage stakeholders and exercise powers of persuasion and influence. They also need to be commercially aware. There’s a really good list of soft skills for architects in this post by Arnon Rotem-gal-oz (@arnonrgo). Arnon’s post is thirteen years old now but seems to have stood the test of time. In it, he outlines six key areas:

• Leadership: acting as a technical manager for a project, influencing, guiding and directing others (who are often not direct reports) towards the same shared vision.
• Systems thinking: understanding the “big picture” as well as the interdependence and interactions between components – how they operate independently and as a whole.
• Strategic thinking: understanding the context that the solution sits within – how it supports the organisation’s goals and meets different stakeholders’ needs – balancing these needs to create a robust solution.
• Organisational politics: Architects are logical thinkers – their decision making is based on analysing a set of options and picking the best one – except that in any organisation there will be other factors that apply non-rational influences to the decision making processes.
• Communications: I’ve mentioned this already, but I cannot understate its importance. It’s not just about writing and presenting too – storytelling and negotiation are also key.
• Human relations: covering team dynamics (how the team behaves at different stages of development), personal dynamics (motivations and personality types) and pragmatism (recognising when to let others have their way).

When I was writing this, I asked Matt Ballantine @Ballantine70 for his input. Matt reminded me of a post he wrote about CIO traits you won’t see on a job spec: curiosity; humility; and empathy. These are just as relevant to an Architect.

We need the curiosity to explore new things – not just new technologies but also new ways of doing business. Question why things are done as they are. What if we changed this? Could a new process help there? Could technology replace this manual process? What about our business partners and the way we integrate with them? Do the services we provide meet the needs of our end customers?

Humility is important too. The point is that the Architect is not an expert. They know a lot and they know how to put the pieces together – or if not, they can work out an approach. But it’s fine to say “I don’t know” sometimes. Actually, say “I don’t know but I have an idea how to find out” – and don’t do it too often. A little humility is good, but not so much that it calls your ability into doubt.

Empathy is essential. Understand the impact that what you’re doing has on others. Maybe the reason they are resistant to the change you want to implement is that they are concerned about the impact. Try to see things from other perspectives: is there another way to do it? Can we change something to make it more acceptable?

Back in 2017, I wrote about people change management and the ADKAR model. We need to understand people’s motivations in order to drive successful changes. Take them on a journey and help them to adapt. As Matt says in his post:

“If you are going to be successful in delivering new things, you have to be able to manage the balance of changing technologies and changing people’s behaviours.”

Ideal CIO Personality Traits, Matt Ballantine

Creating a development path

So I’ve come up with a huge shopping list of skills for our “comb-shaped” Architect and, clearly, they won’t all appear overnight. It may be useful to think about architecture skills in the form of a development path.

The first thing to understand is where we’re coming from. What skills does the person who wants to be an Architect already possess? Have they got experience in another role that could be relevant – perhaps they’ve already worked in IT Service, or Project Management, or as a Business Analyst?

Once you know the starting point, look at the target. Define the skills and experience that are needed, identify the gaps, and plan to fill them.

There’s a common misconception that Architects need to be über-technical but I would say not. At this point I should say this is not my first rodeo. (I have been burned by this point on Twitter in the past). Some people will argue that domain knowledge is needed – and that is true, but not at a deep level. And technology can be learned.

In my experience, some Architects can find it difficult to extract themselves from technology. Whereas taking someone from a different discipline (such as Business Analysis or Technical Project Management) and training them to understand how the parts fit together can work well.

What should the development path include? I’d suggest that there should be a mixture of things, but it could be something like this:

In conclusion…

I hope this (rather long) post has given some insight into some of the skills that may be useful for a career in (IT) architecture and how to develop them.

Please let me know your thoughts – especially if you know of resources that can be useful to others who are developing skills as an architect.

Thanks to Matt Ballantine for his help in collecting my thoughts and ideas into something that almost flows (even if it is a bit long for a blog post).

Featured image by Crisco 1492 from Wikimedia Commons, licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).

I’ve been having a few conversations recently about what IT architecture is – both from the perspective of developing the practice that I run at risual and from conversations with others who are looking to develop an IT architecture capability in their organisations. It’s become abundantly clear to me that the term means different things to different people and is often abused. And that’s without considering that leading figures in construction would argue that IT folks shouldn’t be using the name “Architect” at all!

To be fair, it seems that even (construction) Architects are arguing over whether someone is an Architect or not. Which is somewhat amusing to me as the collective noun for an architect is… an “argument of Architects”. I kid you not!

In IT, for some organisations, becoming an Architect has become the term for a senior technical person who understands large chunks of the organisation’s IT. But that’s not what it should be. Architecture is not design. But design is part of architecture. Confused? Bear with me, please.

Etymology

Let’s look at the definition of the word “architecture”:

architecture /???k?t?kt??/ noun

1. the art or practice of designing and constructing buildings.”schools of architecture and design”

[e.g.] the style in which a building is designed and constructed, especially with regard to a specific period, place, or culture. “Georgian architecture”.

2. the complex or carefully designed structure of something. “the chemical architecture of the human brain.

[e.g.] the conceptual structure and logical organization of a computer or computer-based system.

Origin: mid 16th century: from Latin architectura, from architectus.

Oxford Languages

So there we have it, architecture is about conceptual structures and logical organisation. It is not about detailed design. Ergo, an IT Architect, is not just an experienced technician.

Unfortunately though, if we look at the definition of an “architect” it all starts to fall apart. The noun for the computing sense of the word is defined as “a person who designs hardware, software, or networking applications and services of a specified type for a business or other organization” and the verb (if you can consider that architecting is really a thing – I don’t!) is “design and configure (a program or system)”. Basically, in computing, we seem to be using architect as a synonym for designer!

Different types of architect

Maybe looking at definitions of words was not as helpful as it should have been. So let’s consider the types of Architect we have in the IT world:

In reality, many people will move up and down this spectrum. Sometimes, a Solution Architect will have to “roll up their sleeves” and help out with a technical situation. Or maybe they will elevate themselves into the some of the Enterprise Architecture role – particularly if there is no formal Enterprise Architecture function within an organisation. But two things are clear in my mind:

• Architecture is far more than just design.
• Enterprise Architecture is not the same as architecture-at-enterprise-scale.

Sitting in ivory towers?

I’ve seen technical people with disdain for Architects because they consider them to have little practical understanding of their world. Similarly, I’ve seen “Architects” struggle to extract themselves from the mire of technical detail – particularly if that’s what they love to work with.

It’s important to be mindful of the relevance of the architecture work that’s taking place. Principles are all well and good if they make sense and are followed – but, if the Architects sit in an ivory tower generating paperwork that is of no relevance to the rest of the organisation, they will be doomed to failure. Similarly, we talk a lot about technical debt – sometimes that debt needs to be paid off, and sometimes it’s there for a good reason.

Perhaps a better way to look at it is this view, from the Enterprise Architecture Professional Journal, in which the author cautions against the argument of Architects becoming an arrogance of Architects.

Like so many things in the world of work, communication is key. And developing good architecture skills requires good written and verbal communication skills. Then there’s stakeholder management, building relationships, commercial awareness and much more.

Next time…

This post is long enough already and the topic of developing skills is pretty involved. So, in my next post, I’ll look at some ways we can develop (IT) architecture skills – and at why there seems to be so little value in (IT) architecture certifications.

Featured image by Donna Kirby from Pixabay.