Architect — The Mythical Being

Remedios Vario -- The Juggler -- 1956
Remedios Vario — The Juggler — 1956

What The Architect is not

This is a real architect role description sent to me by a real UK company, as part of the recruitment process.

I have only slightly changed it. I think it actually defines what the Architect is not.

This text describes an mythical being with skill set and other abilities, impossible to match by any human being Architect.

Again: This was a real requirement in a job advert. It shows very clearly, how wrong some companies can be about who and what are the Architects.

The image above is famous painting. I think it rather nicely fits this text . “The Juggler” (Remedios Vario, 1956). All the copyrights do apply.


Requirements for an Architect candidate

To be selected and employed by an real company

To be selected candidate Architect should  be:

  •  Responsible for directing technical standards, providing the architecture and technical road-map and ensuring technical governance.
  • Responsible for creating and maintaining enterprise wide system architectures and collating artifacts.
  • Responsible for understanding the data journey through all the systems.
  • Responsible for ensuring the technical capability, high standards and accountability for protecting the Teams from technical debt.
  •  Responsible for building really strong technical standards and making sure that business clearly understands the road-map and architecture.
  • Responsible for building technical level relationships with key suppliers and managing these in a responsible and ethical manner.
  • Responsible for sharing the technical context and challenge and seeking the partnership and alignment of vision and goals.
  • Accountable for the technical solution delivered and direction of  the solution that is built and maintained.
  • Responsibility in designing for support as well as designing to meet customer requirements.
  • The one who will make business recognize that business value comes from various technical capabilities.
  • Responsible for the the architecture and design; driving quality through peer reviews, implementing best practices and sharing the knowledge across the teams.
  • Responsible for championing the appropriate use of Agile and DevOps best practices, in order to drive continuous delivery at an ever increasing pace while maintaining the high levels of service to an “always on” platform.
  • Communicating with suppliers to understand their own road-maps and how to make the most of emerging technologies and features from the platform as well as being viewed as an industry expert to the customers.

The candiate Architect will have

  • Strong leadership and direction on where to take the Architecture, Integration and Design, the principles to apply and rules of play
  • The natural ability to stimulate a collaborative, team focused and fun environment
  • Imagination and a track record of experimentation
  • Patience with people but impatience when it comes to delivering more and more benefit to customers and consumers.
  • Demand to facilitate high velocity controlled changes.
  • Excellent communications skills with the ability to tell stories, draw pictures and document requirements in a manner that takes complex business requirements and problems and translates these in a manner the development team can understand and respond to. Also be able to effectively communicate to customers and users , features developed and how they could get the best from these.
  • A working foundation in process frameworks like ITIL, Prince2, Enterprise Architecture Methodology,
  • Agile and DevOps with experience in executing these in a highly automotive, high velocity output, consistently changing operational environment
  • A strong understanding and appreciation of the ‘consumer’ perspective – what they expect from IT and what they’ll need even before they do.
  • An awareness of the changing pace and individual-centric design of IT in the market place.
  • An eagerness to learn enough about the business and its road-map. With whatever processes, tools or tricks are needed to get the job done
  • Passion for eliminating Technical Debt
  • Ability to see the end-to-end system, understand constraints and bottlenecks and ability to work out how process can be simplified, interactions can be automated and through mastery, how the system can become highly efficient in both delivery and support.
  • A little bit of an obsession when it comes to the configuration control, ergonomics and aesthetics, user experience and customer perception of the business. Architect need to set the standards.

Essential skills, candidate Architect should have:

  • Driving The Solution to Feasibility
  • Enterprise, Domain and Systems Architecture
  • Ergonomic and User-Centric Design
  • Motivation
  • Vision and Strategy
  •  Self-Learning

That’s all…