![]() ![]() How do you see the role evolving in the next five or ten years? What do you think is going to change? You have to work out where the gaps in the conversation are that need to be filled in so you can get a complete picture of what’s going on, on either the business side or the technology side. The problem-solving comes in each conversation where you’re drilling down to specify what they’re actually talking about, because people often use the same terms but they have different meanings. For example, when you say cost reduction, do you mean you want fewer staff or lower operational expenses? You need to be able to speak both languages so that you can ask pertinent questions. A technology audience like to talk about the ease of administration, component reuse, failover and recovery, load balances, network zones, firewalls, security policy, and data placement. A business audience will talk about things like ROI, cost reductions, benefit maximization, flexibility and scalability. If you can’t speak business language, you’re not going to understand their concerns, and I think that’s the main thing. That’s where the idea of the translator comes in, because you need to talk the language of the audience you have in front of you at that moment. So I wanted to know whether you had any tips for how to become a good bridge between the two when they often talk a very different language. We’ve found from these interviews that Architects are often described as the bridge between the business and the tech teams. That leads perfectly to my next question. The real skill of the Solution Architect role is being able to talk effectively with both the business side and the technology side. If I think we’re going to solve a business problem with a particular technology, I have to be able to talk to the vendor and be sure it is the right technology. ![]() So one of the things I say is that I don’t have to be the smartest person in the room but I do have to know the people who are. One of the areas of tension is that there are so many technologies and products out there and so many ways of solving problems. ![]() After that, I talk to the technical team about how to make it happen. I put all of that together with a whole bunch of clouds and arrows and boxes with labels on them to translate the business view of what needs to be achieved into a technical view of how it can be delivered. Then I take that information and work out the objectives, benefits, limitations, constraints, advantages, assets and liabilities of the project. I like to discover what their pain points are or what’s currently limiting them. I’ll talk to the business side first and understand what they’re trying to do, because IT ultimately is a business tool that exists to achieve a business objective. It’s about figuring out how to integrate products and I find increasingly that I see this job as being a translator. Problem solving is definitely a big part of it now, especially with more and more people wanting off-the-shelf products that don’t need to be heavily customized. What do you think it means to be a Solution Architect? Becoming a Solution Architect was the obvious choice in hindsight, although I can’t say it was obvious at the time. I’d reached as far up the ladder as I could on the engineer side and my options were shifting into a management position or continuing to solve problems which is what I like to do. I ended up being responsible for the entire data storage environment for the lottery company Tatts Group and then moved on to a Solution Architect role five or so years ago. I started my IT career on a helpdesk for an internet service provider and then moved into server support before finding a home in the UNIX and enterprise storage world. As the Solution Architect, I look after a range of business applications and identify all of the integrations involved and develop the strategies for moving those applications to the new data centers. ![]() The current project for the Bank of Queensland is to help move their data centers from Brisbane to Sydney. I move from gig to gig, trying to make a difference wherever I end up. What are the challenges that he comes across when planning major new architectures?įirstly, Chris, could you tell us what your role is as a Solution Architect? In the second interview in this series exploring the role of IT Architects, Redgate’s Michaela Murray is joined by Chris Slee, an independent Solution Architect currently working with C5, an IT consultancy in Australia, on a number of projects for the Bank of Queensland. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |