Teamwork makes the dream work
John C. Maxwell
Developers often think that they are smarter than everyone else, especially their business colleagues. Since Architects tend to come from a development background they may bring that ‘baggage’ with them to their new role. This is not a good thing! On major engagements a successful architect will work and build relationships with a wide range of stakeholders including client solution architects, enterprise architects, application architects, integration architects, legacy architects, supplier product architects/post sales support staff and of course Delivery Leads, Build Leads and their corresponding client Program/Project Managers.
In a typically complex delivery environment, soft skills are needed to build relationships and understand the key concerns and positions of others. This will help the architect to define and gain acceptance of their recommended solution. Large clients tend to have some form of Technical Design Authority group to approve key design decisions. Pity the poor naive architect who presents at one of these ‘Dragons Den‘ sessions for the first time. Their chance of being successful is close to zero. The newbie architect may well have tried to present what they thought was a perfect solution only to see it and their personal credibility vanish in just a few minutes. Even if the architect has been smart and discussed draft decks in advance with key client stakeholder to gain additional perspectives and possible objections to work on in order to gain acceptance by the TDA, imagine what will happen to them if the Delivery Lead has been blind-sided by this solution and had neither the budget or schedule flexibility to deliver it. This could be career limiting!
A successful architect needs to be smart to absorb vast amounts of information to define solutions but equally importantly they need to be highly aware of the ‘political environment’ and constraints within which they have to operate. They need to develop their soft skills alongside their technical skills to enable them build and leverage relationships and use their network to enable them to obtain all the key facts, requirements, dependencies and constraints to develop a solution which will be acceptable to all the key stakeholders.
