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What do architects do?

Using Skills​

"The foundation for practicing architects. It requires knowledge and the ability to apply it to solve real problems."

Examples of using skills in practice:

  • Defining requirements with a focus on NFRs.
  • Spotting missing or problematic requirements.
  • Designing solutions by creating technical documentation and diagrams.
  • Breaking down work into implementable packages.
  • Estimating infrastructure costs and realistic objectives for SLAs.
  • Running a PoC for a new tool, technology, or pattern.
  • Conducting code reviews and providing constructive feedback.
  • Troubleshooting problems by diving into logs, metrics, and code.

Making an Impact​

"The measure of how well an architect applies his or her skill to benefit the company."

Architects often have a lot of freedom in what they work on. It is crucial to be self-driven and prioritize topics that have the greatest value to the organization, not just the most interesting ones :) How can you achieve that?

  • Be aware of company-wide strategic objectives and key results. Evaluate your ideas in terms of how they contribute.
  • Participate in planning, backlog refinement, and goal-setting sessions. Know the reasoning behind the priorities.
  • Understand the business, value flow, and wider ecosystem: who the customers and competitors are.
  • Be aware of pain points and obstacles. Review outcomes from Inspect & Adapt meetings, RCAs, and NPS results; proactively ask for feedback about products, platforms, and processes used in the company.
  • Double-check that you are not duplicating someone else’s work. You may be skilled enough to take almost any task—great—but maybe there are already people focusing on a specific assignment. Do not compete as a solo warrior; find them and join them if you think you can improve something.

Taking Leadership​

"Determines whether an architect advances the state of the practice."

The book explains this as mentoring others, teaching, and sharing to ‘scale out your brain horizontally.’ For me, this blog is one way to do that. How can you take leadership inside your company?

  • Take formal roles in projects; avoid authority without responsibility.
  • Join leadership structures (e.g., a department leadership group, SAFe ART leadership, a hackathon organizing committee, or site committees) to influence how the organization is designed by collaborating with formal decision-makers.
  • Create documentation that serves as a learning resource, and schedule briefings for the target audience (e.g., engineering teams) to walk through the content and announce its availability.
  • Run onboarding sessions for new hires that explain the company’s high-level architecture.
  • Define practices and guidelines to help others create discoverable documentation.
  • Knowing how things work is valuable, but an even greater contribution is describing how things should work (the target architecture).

Not an architect?​

Hey! None of these activities is reserved for architects! If you are reading this and you are an engineer or even hold any other role in the organization, the above activities will make you feel better and will most likely advance your career.

Already an architect?​

If you are already wearing an architect badge, people will expect you to do that - especially if nobody else is doing it in the technical area - maybe because they do not have the skills, are shy, or do not feel empowered to do that.

Eyes are on you; the responsibility is there even if not formally written in your job description. If one of those three pillars is missing from your activities—showing skills, making impact, or taking leadership—then you will probably feel that the architect’s job is not satisfactory. You may then find many reasons why it is like that: obstacles in the organization, people not willing to “align,” missing competencies, no budgets, different time zones, or X, Y, Z... (BTW, check my article about accountability related to that ;-)

But then review whether you have done something in those three areas recently: using your skills, creating an impact, and leading others to do better. If you make sure that checklist is checked on those three points in the last month, things will start to happen. People will gather around you, ready to join your initiatives or benefit from them, to be on "your team", or to become your internal “customers.” And you will regain joy and see meaning in the work you are doing.

Being consistently active in those three areas is not easy. Do not expect every action to be a game changer that will give you the “Employee of the Month” award. Small actions also count!