Jiri’s Notepad

Even though the right staffing is important, successful architecture is not only the numbers game. One of the key functions of the architecture team, alongside their governance and delivery roles, is to provide solution and architecture leadership. At its simplest, architecture leadership is about setting the vision, enthusing and motivating others to achieve the vision and as one of Wikipedia definitions points out “… set[ting] an example for others and lead[ing] from the front�.

Some would argue that successful project depends in the first place on the skills, behaviours and attitude of people involved in its delivery.

What are architects leading on?

Let us focus firstly on the ‘architecture’ part of the ‘architecture leadership’ and establish the way in which architecture leadership different from other instances of team or project effort.

Thanks to research into product development, there is now an established link between success of a solution and its conceptual integrity, meaning its alignment with customer requirements backed up by its internal consistency.

On a business project with a big IT element, architects are bound to be the key group critical for the achievement of conceptual integrity. Related to this objective, the most important task architects are responsible for is the alignment of the solution with goals, strategies and needs of customers and other stakeholders:

• Firstly, a solution needs to support the goals and needs of business users. The solution needs to support new or changed business capabilities and processes. Architects’ job is not only to elicit what the key goals are but also assist with their translation into solution requirements. Often this role starts with facilitating agreement of various parts of the business user community on common goals and objectives and vision;
• Secondly, the solution needs to be in line with broader enterprise strategies, and work done by other projects. As part of managing this type of alignment, architects need to address dependency management and assist in allocation of funds;
• Thirdly, all programmes face the issue of solution being fit for operations. Architects address this by explicit identification of operational performance objectives and ensuring arrangements are put in place to meet these.

In all three cases architects pay attention to the solution alignment with requirements, whilst maintaining the conceptual integrity of the resulting solution, ensuring solution is deliverable, provides intended value and fits within the broader budget.

Authority

As the term ‘architecture by committee’ suggests, the industry has a plenty of of experience with this unsuccessful approach to developing architecture. Both software management and product development research agrees on the need for a strong product / solution lead, called lead architect in IT organisations, who

• defines and owns the solution vision responding to the needs of various parts of customers;
• acts as the ultimate solution decision maker;
• serves as the guardian of the solution vision - enforcing compliance of the solution under development with the vision.

In order to be effective in the role, lead architect and by delegation the core team supporting him needs to have a significant level of authority allowing him or her to

• make significant solution-related decisions;
• influence allocation funds and resources at the highest level of authority;
• influence over programme strategy & plans impacting programme organisation and timescales.

Attaining this level of authority effectively requires sponsorship at the level of the programme board. To a large extent this cannot be just mandated and has to be earned. Both lead architect and the core team needs to build on their personal credibility, expertise and proficiency in how to get things done and sustained by relationships with the programme stakeholders. Especially with the new teams, it often it takes considerable time and effort before such a level of authority is obtained.

Building the core team

Discussion of architects’ qualifications often gets simplified to a question of professional skills. Admittedly, it is impossible to deliver a successful project without adequate expertise. At the same time the pressure, complexity and volume of delivery activities on large scale engagements create a completely new level of challenge that requires high level of professional competence, excellent communication skills and strong dose of personal leadership. These criteria then apply to architects in all key roles – whether they work in the central or project teams. Ensuring the key staff gave the right professional and behavioural attributes undoubtedly makes personnel selection one of the activities of highest importance on the programme.

Ed Yourdon recommends two approaches to building an architecture team in his excellent book on pitfalls and tactics for delivering mad projects: “[1] Insists on a well-honed, mission-impossible team that has worked together before; or [2] Choose mere mortals, but make sure they know, what they’re getting in forâ€?.

Assuming you have sufficient resources to chose from and you have a healthy pool of people to chose from, the key is to chose the good ones. Another Yourdon’s recommendation on what other approaches that should be avoid may come useful: “The final strategy [Take whoever you’re given and convert them into a mission impossible team] is to be avoided at all cost. If the project turns out to be dumping ground for personnel that no other project wants, then it is almost certainly a suicide project”.

Personal characteristics

What would be the criteria qualifying architects to be suitable for large scale engagement? What personal attributes make them credible? Reflecting on architects I have met, I can point to three broad types of qualifications that make architect successful and effective on large scale engagement: subject matter expertise, general skills and behaviours and attitudes:

• Subject matter expertise is at the foundations of a successful architecture team. Even though the exact area of subject matter expertise depends on the focus of the programme, the team members together and individually need possess sufficient combination of the expertise in several broad categories, including industry and business problem knowledge, architecture methods, delivery methods and practices and last but not least understanding and experience with the type of products proposed and used.
• Competence at general problem solving, decision making and communication is what distinguishes architects who are merely OK from those who are very good. The key skills and competencies in this area include problem solving, decision making, ability to challenge assumptions and constraints. One of the key value adds of architects to the success of such an endeavour is their ability to help respective communities to understand each others’ goals and constraints and by doing so balance individual requirements and development of the shared vision. The larger the programme and the larger and more varied the stakeholder communities, the more important this brokering of agreement becomes. Therefore, the skill toolset of architects need to include first class communication and influencing skills, including the capability to manage relationships with senior customers, a decent facilitation skills and high conflict resolution skill.
• With other bases covered, attitudes and behaviours distinguish good architects from great architects. Because attitude and behaviours can, to an extent, compensate for shortcomings in other areas, they can uplift the level of general and subject matter skills. Selecting architects that are not only competent, but also can commit themselves, flexible, willing do what is required, who show initiative and resilience whilst working under the pressures of large scale programme delivery is the key differentiator when selecting the staff.

This require you use some recruiting smarts. If you don’t want to read books, at least read Guy Kawasaki’s post on recruitment and look at Belbin team roles.

Summary

The most important task architects do is aligning the solution with goals, strategies and needs of customers and other stakeholders. To achieve the alignment, projects need a strong solution lead, who defines and owns the solution vision, acts as the ultimate solution decision maker and serves as the guardian of the vision. The person in this role (often called lead architect) needs to have the authority to make big solution-related decisions, influence allocation of money and resources, and have a say over project strategy, plans and organisation. To be able to do this, he or she needs to demonstrate credibility, competency and have highly developed communication skills which must be backed up by formal authority sponsored at the project board level.