|
Thoughts
on tech architects
Outsourcers
in the West are acutely aware of the increasing importance
of employing top-tier architects to oversee the execution
and management of overseas outsourcing efforts. MOHAN BABU
says that this has opened up newer career opportunities in
many large organisations .
Anyone
who has been in the field of technology long enough probably
knows that the nom de plume for a tech-guru in a group, division
or organisation changes every few years or decades. About
a decade or so ago when mainframes and mid-range systems still
ruled the IT world, it was fashionable to call the technical-chief
of a project a systems analyst. The title was generally conferred
on a person who had grown up the ranks and grappled with the
intricacies of software life-cycle in depth. Along with the
advent of application development on PCs and the Internet,
the term ‘architect’ started finding vogue. This trend is
so entrenched in our lexicon that any techie with just a few
years in software programming wishes to be titled an architect.
Before
we go further along this discussion, it should be noted that
most organisations have clear paths for those in IT wishing
to move towards a technical or managerial track. Consulting
companies provide such dual-track to consultants typically
as follows:
a) Management track: Junior Developer—Senior Developer—Team
Lead—Project manager—Program Manager—Account Manager, etc.
or;
b)
Technical track: Junior Developer—Senior Developer—Tech Lead—Senior
Tech Lead/Designer—Architect….
Although
the above ‘career path’ is just illustrative, each organisation
will probably customise a structure like this tailored to
their needs. Our discussion in this column will focus on the
technical track, more specifically towards—who an architect
really is? However, a word of caution: I will not be a career
guidance specialist, and will not try to point you towards
a roadmap of an architectural career track. The aim is just
to examine who an architect is (or could be), and what they
do for a living. Perhaps we can begin with my favourite illustration
of an architect (See diagram above. An enterprise has many
different levels of architectural experts—from a Microsoft’s
MSDN
article: http://msdn.microsoft.com /library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvsent
/html/FoodMovers1.asp).
In
the article, the author defines different kinds of architects.
At the top of the pyramid is the strategic architect, a person
responsible for overseeing the overall strategy of the information
technologies at an enterprise—someone like a CTO, CIO or an
executive sponsor. The enterprise architect typically oversees
several applications and projects, and is responsible for
cross-platform applications and their architectural decisions.
The project or solution architect is responsible for a specific
application and its architecture. At the bottom of the pyramid,
operational or deployment architects are responsible for defining
the operational requirements and executing the deployment
of an application from an architectural standpoint.
Now,
most of us associate the term architect with that of a deployment
architect—a glorified designer—who understands a specific
technology like J2EE, .Net, Unix, etc, and ensures that the
technical deliverables map to the operational requirements
of the application being developed. Also, most consulting
companies providing staff supplementation to projects get
involved in deployment (design, development and deployment)
of the product/solution; and since most of them don’t scale
up their expertise, their employees too have to be content
to aspire towards a career of a deployment architect, at best.
The few large IT consulting houses that do scale up get fewer
large assignments where they are also involved in architecting
solutions for entire projects, and very rarely divisions within
enterprises.
Interestingly,
with the brouhaha over outsourcing and global delivery models
of project management reaching a crescendo, both the companies
outsourcing projects and the outsourcers are acutely aware
of the increasing importance of employing top-tier architects
to oversee the execution and management of such efforts. This
has opened up newer career opportunities at larger companies
in the West that are looking at overseas outsourcing as a
serious business proposition. They are increasingly building
a cadre of architects who can work with their business leaders
to ensure that the sourcing and delivery of technical implementations
meet the desired objectives.
If
anything, the shift towards outsourcing will only accentuate
the importance of architects, technical experts at both ends
of the spectrum who can speak the same language (both technical
and business), and ensure that the teams at different ends
work towards a unified goal. Now, borrowing from Microsoft
again will be a question for every aspiring architect: where
do you want to go today?
|
