Responsibilities and roles of system architects __ Work

"Occupation Name"

Systems Architect (System architecture)

"Career Positioning"

System architecture, is to determine the requirements of the technology to achieve the framework, make good planning, the use of complete sets of tools, in the planning step down to complete the task.

A System architect (also known as an Enterprise Architect or system architect) is a technical person who ultimately identifies and evaluates system requirements, gives development specifications, builds a core framework for system implementation, clarifies technical details, and clears key difficulties. He/she focuses on the system's "technology implementation". So he/she should be a master of specific development platforms, languages, tools, and the most appropriate solution for common scenarios, with enough knowledge of the development team to be able to assess the cost of their team's ability to achieve specific functional requirements.

System Architect is responsible for the design of the overall system architecture, from the requirements to the design of every detail to take into account, grasp the entire project, so that the design of the project as high as possible, easy to develop, maintenance convenience, upgrade simple, and so on.

"Job Responsibilities"

The responsibility of the system Architect is to design a company's infrastructure and provide guidelines on how to establish and maintain the system. Specifically, the responsibilities of the system architect are mainly embodied in the following aspects,

1 is responsible for the company's system architecture design, research and development work;
2 undertakes the bridge function from the business to the technology conversion;
3 Assist the project manager to develop the project plan and control the project progress;
4 is responsible for assisting and directing SA to carry out design work;
5 is responsible for the organization of Technical research and tackling the work;
6 responsible for the organization and management of the company's internal technical training work;
7 responsible for organizing and leading the company's internal staff to study the new technology related to the project.
8 Management Technology Support team and provide technical support to project and product development and implementation team.
9 understand the business requirements of the system and develop the overall framework of the system (including, technical framework and business framework)
10 The system framework related technology and business training to guide the development of developers. and solve the system development, operation of various problems.
11 system-level grasp of reuse, expansion, security, performance, scalability, simplicity, etc.

The job of the system architect is to screen out the best technology solutions for different situations, rather than sinking into the specifics of the implementation. Furthermore, system architects are not trained, and a good system architect may not be a good programmer, but can not understand the difference between technology, the development of technology trends, the use of the technology's current costs and subsequent costs, the technology and specific application of the degree of coupling, the resources they can deploy the situation, research and development may encounter risks, How to avoid risk. These are the main things architects need to consider.

In addition, it must be noted that there are two types of architecture, the first of which is the design of the infrastructure, such as: OS, hardware, network, various application servers, and so on.

The second is the architect of software development design, they are responsible for planning the operating mode of the program, hierarchical structure, call relations, planning specific implementation technology types, and even with the entire team to do a good job in software development project management.

"The role of the system architect"

How should the system architect implement the functions of its "architecture" enterprise? Especially in the design of enterprise IT strategy, how to reflect the value of the architect.

Here The example illustrates,

Toby Redshaw, vice president of Motorola, said the architect was "the backbone of the IT strategy" and that the role had a real impact on the company. When Toby Reshaw entered Motorola in 2001 and acted as Vice president of its strategy and architecture, he was like a home buyer valuing a ramshackle apartment. Instead of just making superficial changes, he drew up a plan to rebuild Motorola's entire infrastructure, which would overhaul the company's infrastructure. Like an architect designing a house, Redshaw developed a technical framework blueprint, a technical building, to make the things that he called "the spaghetti-like chaos of applications, machines and pipelines" orderly. He says that as long as the right architecture strategy is chosen and used by the right person, the motor can produce a large number of applications faster than before, and can reduce the cost of maintaining overlapping systems. Redshaw said, "If you do not even have a building structure, even if your stone-cutter technology is more brilliant, what is the use." The architect is the backbone of the IT strategy. "System architects like Redshaw have a huge impact within the enterprise. Although they have been holding important positions in the information technology sector for a long time, they are often commissioned to provide comprehensive profile analysis and to suggest some recommendations on how to comply with the criteria for the implementation of these tasks, which have very limited impact on day-to-day operations. Today, as companies look for ways to rebuild their IT systems to make them more cost-effective and more flexible, architects are increasingly viewed as a critical factor.

The goal of a well-defined architecture is to reduce the cost of running complex computing systems. A company can use a specific database configuration, such as Microsoft's database, to standardize the system without having to have each department of the company install the database servers it needs.

"If you don't have a strong architecture strategy where everyone goes the other way and ends up with six servers and software platforms, your system becomes a hodgepodge, and that will increase your costs," said Andy Miller, vice president of technical architecture for Express. "There are many advantages to the independence of the architect, such as the overall grasp of the system, quality assurance, advanced technology, architecture flexibility, efficiency, but also effectively reduce costs." Imagine, 1-month salary 1w Architect + 10-month Salary 5k engineer, certainly better than the 11-month salary 6k senior engineer effect. In general, the higher-level architects are more experienced and more engaged, and they are professionals closely related to the company's overall IT strategy.

"The capabilities that the system architect should have"

As a design architect for software development, you must have some programming skills, as well as a high degree of learning new architecture design and programming skills. In addition, I think as a software architect, must also understand a certain hardware, network, the basic knowledge of the server. Otherwise, you do not know what materials can be used, how do you plan your software architecture according to the actual situation? Ignoring the continuous and new design capabilities of the program is never going to be a successful system architect.

In general, a system architect should have the following capabilities:

1. More than 8 years working experience in software industry;
2, with more than 4 years of C/s or b/n architecture software PRODUCT development and architecture and design experience;
3, with more than 3 years of code writing work experience;
4, with a wealth of large and medium-sized development projects of the overall planning, project design and technical team management experience;
5, the relevant technical standards have a profound understanding of the software engineering standards have a good grasp;
6. Net/java technology and the whole solution has a deep understanding and skilled application, and proficient in WEBSERVICE/J2EE architecture and design patterns, and on this basis to design product framework;
7, with object-oriented analysis, design, development capabilities (OOA, OOD, OOP), proficient in UML and rose, skilled use of Rational ROSE, PowerDesigner and other tools for design and development;
8, proficient in large databases such as Oracle, SQL Server and other development;
9, a comprehensive understanding of computer systems, networks and security, application system architecture and so on, familiar with project management theory, and have practical basis;
10, in the application system development platform and project management has a deep foundation, has large and medium-sized application system development and implementation of successful cases;
11, good team spirit and cooperation, have strong internal and external communication skills.

"The difference between the system architect and other roles"

Relationship between system architect and product manager The Product Manager usually refers to the "person" who is responsible for product design. A good ideal product manager, should also have a high commercial quality and strong technical background. The product manager should have deep experience in the field, that is to say, very familiar with the business area that the software system applies to. For example, product managers who develop real estate sales software should be familiar with the standard sales processes of real estate companies, even more clearly than most salespeople. If you develop a generic product, he/she also has a deep insight into the market and potential customer needs.

So what is the difference between a system architect and a product manager?

We should not confuse the two, this is a lot of discussion and practice of common mistakes. In my opinion, if the development software is compared to a film, the product manager is to the system architect, just as the writer is to the director. Although the product manager must have a certain technical background, but should still belong to "business person (business people)", and the system architect is certainly a technical expert. The position, angle and starting point of the two views are completely different.

The relationship between the system architect and the project manager The Software project manager refers to the project control/management, pay attention to the progress of the project itself, quality, distribution, transfer, coordination, management of good people, wealth, things and other resources of the person in charge. For software project managers, including project planning, progress tracking/monitoring, quality assurance, Configuration/release/version/change management, personnel performance evaluation, and so on. Excellent project manager needs the quality, it is not only the use of several kinds of software or the understanding of a number of abstract methodological principles, but also the valuable experience gained from a large number of project practices, as well as the ability to communicate, coordinate, motivate, and even have some charisma or leadership temperament (CHARISMA).

This shows that there are significant differences in responsibilities between project managers and system architects. Confuse these two roles, often also can lead to inefficient, disorderly development. In particular, in terms of personality factors, simple technical staff tend to ignore the "people" factor, which is a major aspect of management activities. In addition, like Air Cover in war, a dedicated project manager can cope with a large number of incidental events and chores during the development process, and for a slightly larger project, the chores themselves can occupy almost all of the time of a full-time author. In a project, it is the system architect, not the project manager, that drives the project forward. The responsibility of the project manager is to coordinate with the system architect to provide support in all aspects. The main responsibility is to communicate with internal and external departments and manage resources (including people). The system architect proposes the overall structure of the system and gives the development guidance. What is the role of a project manager in a project? If he is a designer, he must be better than anyone else and be able to have something to be served. If he is only a project manager, the system architect has the specialized personnel, may not be able to master or say to understand it each aspect knowledge, if understands better. In addition, if no one in a project takes full responsibility for the technical architecture and development guidance, but everyone is responsible for a quick architecture, analysis, design, code, and implementation, it will eventually lose management.

The relationship and distinction between system architect and system analyst system analyst (Systems Analyst) is the person who analyzes, designs, and directs the implementation of system development. Generally speaking, the level of system analyst will affect the quality of system development, or even success or failure. But in a perfect system development team, also need to have business experts, technical experts and other support staff. So, system analyst is just one of the roles. But many of our IT companies, usually only system analysts and no technical experts. System analyst is to analyze and design specific system. So his mission and goals are clear. He was just going to perform the task and complete the final design of the system.

The system architect should be separated from the system analyst, but the architect must have all the capabilities of the system analyst, as well as the many capabilities that the designer does not have. The System Architect is the guide, inspection system Analyst's work, asks the system analyst to according to what standard, what tool, what pattern, what technology to design the system. At the same time, the system architect should put forward the solution to the problems that the system analyst put forward and solve the problem in time. And check and review the work of the system analyst.

"How to evaluate the performance of the system architect"

Excellent system Architect is the key person to ensure the strong vitality of the software system. Professional architects can help the company to fully study the existing architecture and design patterns, assess the advantages and disadvantages of the system design and possible risks, through a series of thematic guidance and specific cases to help the company grasp the advanced, mature design patterns, simplify complex business logic and requirements, determine the system is best suited to corporate solutions. Where necessary, custom guidance can also be provided to developers on specific areas or topics. Through the above introduction, we have a more profound understanding of the system architect, we understand the status, role, job responsibilities, and qualifications of the system architect, as well as the differences from other roles, how to assess the performance of the system architect, how to identify a qualified and excellent system architect is not difficult.

Specifically, we can evaluate the performance of the system architect in the following ways:

1. Whether the system architect is an expert in a technical field;
2, the System Architect can guide the design of the analyst, found and pointed out the problems of the design and put forward solutions to assess their work;
3, the system architect can instruct the software engineer to carry on the development work, discovers and pointed out the coding existence question and proposes the solution, appraises their work;
4, the System architect can assist the project manager to develop project plan and control project progress;
5, the system architect can timely and effectively solve the design, the developers put forward the problem, to solve technical problems;
6, the system architect can formulate and standardize the system design and development of documents, tools, models, whether other people easy to understand;
7, the system architect can regularly organize and lead the company's internal staff research, learning and project-related new technologies;
8, the system architect can organize and manage the company's internal technical training work, technical research and tackling work;
9, the system architect can organize and manage the company's internal technical training work, technical research and tackling work;
10, the system architect has a good sense of teamwork and cooperation spirit, have strong internal and external communication skills;
11. Whether the system architect can manage the technical support team and provide technical guarantee for the project and product development and implementation team;
12, the system architect design system structure is reasonable, technologically advanced, whether to meet customer requirements;
13, the system structure whether has the expansibility, the security, can withstand the pressure test, the network traffic in the ultra user number how;
14, how to deal with the boundary of the control system, how to solve the bottleneck problem;
15, the system design prophase, medium and late to solve the problem, whether there are stages, milestones logo;
16, whether there is analysis, identification and as far as possible to avoid risks, reduce the risk of problems caused by the cost of the ability;
17, can give the company to reduce development costs, improve efficiency;