Microsoft Certified Architect Program Competencies

Leadership: Candidates demonstrate that they develop partnerships with stakeholders both inside and outside the organization on their projects, that they can mentor others, that they develop and form strong teams, and that they achieve successful results.

Communication: Candidates demonstrate that they maintain well-written and accurate project documentation, and that they can present information about a technical subject in a concise and measured manner. Candidates are able to influence others, they manage conflict effectively, and they customize their communication to the needs of the target audience.

Organizational dynamics: Candidates demonstrate that they can recognize the key stakeholders on a project and that they can work with those stakeholders to drive the project to a successful conclusion. Candidates recognize the political landscape in an organization that can influence a project, and they can influence organizational politics for the success of their projects in turn.

Strategy: Candidates apply their knowledge of technology to further organizational goals within their vertical industry. They understand the principles of project management and interact with project managers to complete projects successfully. Additionally, candidates understand the economic dimension of projects and how costs influence the available choices for technology.

Process and tactics: Candidates demonstrate that they can gather and refine project requirements from both a technical and a business perspective. They design, create, maintain, and verify models of the deployed infrastructure. They also create effective project artifacts. They exhibit the ability to refine project goals and the tactics that are necessary to achieve those goals as the project develops.

Technology breadth: Candidates understand architectural best practices and can apply them across a breadth of technologies to solve an organizational problem. Candidates can articulate their views on the future development of technology, and they understand the interaction between infrastructure and solution architecture. They use these insights to design appropriate architectural solutions.

Technology depth: Candidates demonstrate that they have a detailed knowledge of the concepts, application, and issues of at least two depth competencies. Candidates also demonstrate the ability to quickly assimilate information about new technologies.

Examples of depth competencies include, but are not limited to, the following:

Ask thought-provoking questions that result in actionable technological patterns or solutions

Actively mentor others

Provide thought leadership by enabling others to see things from a different and better perspective

Influence decision makers

Champion structure, process, best practices, and standards

Promote the capture and reuse of intellectual capital

Effectively build individual partnerships and organizational networks

Effective listener and astute observer

Communicate effectively and persuasively to different audiences (for example, executive or technical)

Effectively mediate and manage conflict

Document designs and specifications that follow company practices

Communicate needs as well as deployment and operations standards to infrastructure architects

Effectively facilitate meetings

Possess good presentation skills

Understand organizational structures, relationships, and influencers

Adeptly maneuver through politically charged organizational situations

Effectively build organizational partnerships and networks

Build relationships with other architects and project stakeholders

Possess an awareness of the internal legal organization and ensure that legal guidelines are met

Exhibit comfort with conflict and thrive in situations that require negotiation and compromise

Explain the business strategy of their own organization

Use enterprise frameworks (for example, the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture or The Open Group Architecture Framework [TOGAF]) to map the business strategy of the organization to a solution architecture

Demonstrate knowledge of industry-specific trends with respect to architecture

Balance the needs of users, management, operations, support, finance, and technology with the strategic needs of the business, including business benefits and vendor pricing implications

Demonstrate an understanding of future trends in technology and how they impact the current and future state of your solution

Describe how you applied knowledge of industry regulations (for example, HIPAA, Basel II, Sarbanes-Oxley, or HL7) to create your solution

Understand how operational frameworks (for example, Control Objectives for Information and related Technology [COBIT], IT Infrastructure Library [ITIL], or ITSM) impact your solution

Understand how techniques for achieving operational excellence (for example, Lean Six Sigma, Total Quality Management [TQM], or Capability Maturity Model [CMM]) impact your solution

Use methodologies and/or frameworks to provide predictability to IT and ensure repeatable success on IT projects

Gather and analyze both technical and business requirements

Envision and create a solution that meets requirements and can be implemented using modeling techniques and mapping their points of integration

Prove the feasibility of a design (for example, POC, pilots, or prototypes)

Use capacity planning techniques to ensure scalable designs

Create the design artifacts that are required to deliver and to maintain the solution

Understand the impact of internal policies (for example, service level agreements [SLAs])

Guide a solution through to completion and audit compliance with specifications and the overall intent of the architecture

Review the ongoing implementation for opportunities for improvement and refine the model as requirements change, implementation choices evolve, and so on

Contribute to technical project management

Apply architectural and engineering concepts to design a solution that meets operational requirements, such as scalability, maintainability, security, reliability, extensibility, flexibility, availability, and manageability

Think abstractly and demonstrate effective application of service-based, object-based, and component-based modeling

Effectively adapt solutions to the capabilities and constraints of the infrastructure

Demonstrate a range of software development skills, such as:

Have a broad architectural knowledge of several technology areas and be able to compare and contrast multiple vendor offerings in those areas

Learn new concepts and gain expertise quickly

Component and solution modeling

Solutions frameworks (for example, the Microsoft .NET Framework and Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition [J2EE])

Integration, as evidenced by knowledge of traditional enterprise application integration (EAI) products such as Microsoft BizTalk Server, IBM WebSphere, or BEA WebLogic

User experience, including smart clients and adaptive UI

Data structuring and management