Differences between system analysts, system architects, and project managers

I transferred a new guy from the Development Department last week and asked me for an interview to see if the job is suitable for the quality department. During the conversation, the young man said that he had been admitted to the university as a system analyst, so I asked him, "What is the main role of the system analyst ?" The young man thought for a while and said, "system analysts mainly organize, manage, and plan systems ". Then I asked, "What is the difference between organization, management, and planning ?" After thinking for a long time, the young man finally shook his head and said, "I don't know ." This question is not intended to embarrass the young man. I hope that he can understand that what he comes to school from books must be linked with practice, either in development or in the quality department, they can't do without their own active learning and thinking. Learning without thinking is just collecting knowledge and cannot be used for themselves. In the first two years after leaving school, most people cannot find their real interests. I am also the same, so they must take the initiative to learn and think at the beginning, no matter where they are, this includes learning the knowledge of your current position, and learning the knowledge outside of your position due to dissatisfaction (of course, this is outside of your work). dissatisfaction is the starting point of thinking. However, because you cannot find your real interests, you need to stick to your position. On the one hand, it may be your own interests. On the other hand, you also need to accumulate strength to find real interests.

There are a lot of additional words. Let's take a look at the differences among system analysts, architects, and project managers? The following is a rough summary based on your own understanding, which may not be comprehensive. The green part represents the main activities that every role needs to participate in. (Note: The system analyst mentioned below shares the responsibilities of design):

First, let's take a look at the differences between architects and system analysts:

1. The system analyst must consider all aspects of the system he designed. He is the original author of the system implementation, it also plays a direct role in meeting customers' technical requirements and accepting product costs.

2. Architects generally have only a few people in software organizations. They are mainly responsible for evaluating the product architecture and approving interfaces between subsystems, the evaluation mainly focuses on system-level quality attributes and costs, including: whether the current architecture meets the reliability requirements, scalability of the system architecture, reusability, performance, and basic public functions. They must perform initial checks on the system designed by the system analyst. Therefore, they are highly responsible and must be undertaken by experienced people. In the communication between other departments of the company and Ivar Jacob bson, Jacob clearly pointed out that the Architecture Committee is not a permanent organization and generally comes from the system analyst of the team. The only permanent position usually has only one chairman, other members must temporarily come from the first line of system development, and only have the most basic idea of system development.

3. system costs are the easiest thing for architects and system analysts to ignore. This is also one of their most basic responsibilities.

Next let's take a look at the differences between the system analyst and the Project Manager:

1. an unreasonable plan is often attributed to the project manager, but this is not a fact. Planning relies heavily on the components of the system designed by the system analyst to complete the process, and only the system analyst can make an accurate judgment on this. Therefore, the initial version of the plan comes from a system analyst rather than a project manager. The main role of the project manager in this regard is to assist the system analyst in preparing a plan, to help consider personnel and resource input, and to strictly monitor the progress of the project during project implementation.

2. quality objectives are developed and planned by system analysts, especially key technical indicators such as performance and reliability. These first tracking subjects are also system analysts. The role of the project manager is to assist the system analyst in arranging various resources to complete the testing and tracking activities of these objectives.

3. Cost is the only factor that requires the attention and strict control of architects, system analysts, and project managers. The reason is very simple. This is the source of food for everyone.

4. Other non-technical factors of the project are basically handled by the Project Manager, including contract, personnel communication, and procurement.

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Relationship between System Architects and product managers
A product manager is usually a "person in charge" of product design ". An excellent and ideal product manager should have a high commercial quality and a strong technical background at the same time. The product manager must have profound experience in the field, that is, he is very familiar with the business field to which the software system is applied. For example, product managers who develop real estate sales software should be familiar with the standard sales process of real estate companies, even more clear than most sales personnel. If a general product is developed, he/she also has deep insights into the market and potential customer needs.
So what is the difference between the System Architect and the product manager?
We should not confuse the two. This is a common mistake in discussion and practice. In my opinion, if we compare software development to filming, the product manager to the System Architect is just like the scriptwriter to the Director. Although the product manager must have a certain technical background, it should still belong to "business people", while the system architect must be a technical expert. Their positions, perspectives, and starting points are completely different.
Relationship between System Architects and project managers and their differences
A software project manager is the person in charge of project control/management, focusing on the progress and quality of the project, and allocating, mobilizing, coordinating, and managing resources such as good people, finance, and things. For software project managers, including project planning, progress tracking/monitoring, quality assurance, configuration/release/version/change management, and personnel performance evaluation. The quality required by an excellent project manager is not only to use several types of software or to understand several abstract methodological principles, but also to the valuable experience gained from a large number of project practices, as well as the ability to communicate, coordinate, motivate, and even have a certain personality charm or leader temperament (charisma ).
It can be seen that there is a great difference between the project manager and the System Architect in their responsibilities. Mixing these two roles often leads to inefficient and disorderly development. In particular, in terms of personality factors, simply technical staff tend to ignore the "human" factor, which is a major aspect of management activities. In addition, like air cover in the war, dedicated project managers can cope with a large number of incidents and chores during the development process. For a relatively large project, these chores themselves occupy almost all the time of a full-time employee. In a project, the System Architect rather than the project manager promotes the development of the project. The project manager is only responsible for cooperating with the System Architect to provide support from various aspects. It is mainly responsible for communicating with internal and external personnel and managing resources (including persons ). The System Architect proposes the overall architecture of the system and provides development guidance. What is the role of the project manager in a project? Even if the administrator is a designer, he must be better than others and be able to serve others. If he is only a project manager and a system architect has a dedicated Engineer, he does not need to be proficient in or understand all aspects of it. In addition, if no one in a project is fully responsible for technical architecture and development guidance, but everyone is responsible for a fast architecture, analysis, design, Code And implementation.
Relationship between System Architects and system analysts and their differences
System Analyst refers to the person who analyzes, designs, and leads the implementation of system development. In general, the level of the system analyst will affect the quality of system development, or even the success or failure. However, a complete system development team also needs business experts, technical experts, and other support personnel. Therefore, the system analyst is only one of the roles. However, many IT companies in China generally only have system analysts rather than technical experts. System analysts analyze and design specific systems. Therefore, his tasks and objectives are clear. He only executes the task to 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 and have many capabilities that the designer does not have. System Architects guide and supervise the work of system analysts, and require system analysts to design systems based on standards, tools, models, and technologies. At the same time, the System Architect should promptly propose solutions to the problems raised by the system analyst. Inspect and review the work of the system analyst.