Architects must be hands on

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Architects must be hands on

John Davies

A good ARCHiTECT should leads by ExAMplE. He (or she) should is able to fulfill all of the positions within his team, from wiring the net-work and configuring the Build process to writing the unit tests and running benchmarks. Without a good understanding of the full range of technology, an architect are little more than a project manager. It is perfectly acceptable for team members to having more in-depth knowledge in their specific areas but it's difficult to Imagine how to team members can has confidence in their architect if the architect doesn ' t understand the technology. As has been said elsewhere, the architect are the interface between the business and the Technol-ogy team, and thus must u Nderstand every aspect of the technology to being able to represent the team to the business without have to constantly ref er others. Similarly the architect must understand the business in order to drive the team toward its goal of serving, the business.
An architect was like a airline pilot:he might not look busy all of the time, but he uses decades of experience to Consta ntly Monitor the situation, taking immedi-ate action if he sees or hears something out of the ordinary. The project Manager (co-pilot) performs the day-to-day management, leaving the architect free from the hassles of mundane Tasks and people management. Ultimately the architect should is responsible for the quality of the projects and their delivery to the busi-ness. This was difficult to achieve without authority, which was critical to the success of any project.
People learn best by watching others; It ' s how we learn as children. A good architect should is able to spot a problem, call the team together, and without picking off a victim, explain what The problem is or might are and provide an elegant workaround or solution. It's perfectly respectable for a architect to
?? Ask for help from the team. The team should feel it is part of the solution, but the architect should chair the discussion and identify the right Solu tion (s).
Architects should be brought to the team at the earliest part of the project; They should not sit-in an ivory tower dictating the-the-the-forward, but should is on the ground-working with the team. Questions about direction or technology choices should not being spun off into separate investigations or new projects, but B E made pragmatically through hands-on investigation or using advice from architect Peers-all Good architects is well Conn Ected.
Good architects should is experts in at least one tool of the their trade, e.g., an IDE; Remember they is hands on. It stands to reason this a software architect should know the IDE, a database architect should know the ER tool, and an in Formation architect should know an XML modelling tool. A Technical or Enterprise Archi-tect, however, should is at least effective with all levels of tooling, from being able t o Monitor network traffic with Wireshark to modelling a complex financial message on xmlspy-no level are too low or too hig H.
An architect usually comes with a good resume and impressive past. He can usually impress the business and technologists, but unless he can demonstrate his ability to be hands on, it ' s diff Icult to gain the respect of the team, difficult for the team to learn, and almost impossible for team members to deliver What they were originally employed to do.
John Davies is currently chief architect at Revolution Money in the U.S. He Re-cently started a new company called Incept5.

Architects must be hands on