What Architect Job Roles Are Recognized By the Microsoft Certified Architect Program?
There are several key characteristics that are common to all effective architects, regardless of the job role that they fill. Some of these common characteristics include:
| • | Possess strong business acumen: All architects understand capital and operational expenses and consider each as they create their solution. Architects read financial statements and have conversations with financial officers and they can target their communications to business owners to justify projects and calculate the return on a project. |
| • | Display forward thinking: When engaging in a project, the architect considers new technologies on the horizon, changes occurring in the customer's industry, and how to best position the customer's IT solutions to take advantage of the current solution in the future. |
| • | Investigate new technologies: The architect is always investigating new trends in technology, IT architecture, and IT business applications. Generally, architects all review the same research papers and they all have an opinion on new trends in technology and architecture. |
| • | Understand architectural frameworks and best practices: Architects understand what enterprise frameworks are and their value to a project. Architects select and use methodologies to the projects they are engaged in and they understand operational frameworks and how their solution will be managed through and after deployment. They understand the life cycle of a project and of a solution. |
| • | Follow and diverge from frameworks: When they work in a particular environment or specific project, architects will customize the frameworks and methodologies used to achieve a solution to a business problem. |
| • | Can quickly develop deep knowledge in a technology: By gaining depth on multiple technologies in the past, the architect can associate or transfer the ability to learn other methods to quickly research and gain expertise on new technologies. |
| • | Can work with ambiguous or incomplete information: Architects search out information to determine the approach they will take to reach a solution, but they can start work with limited and ambiguous information and as a project progresses, make tradeoff decisions to keep a solution on target, on task, and still satisfy the business requirements that were initially identified. |
However, many modern IT architects specialize and typically work in several key areas. Some of the different requirements, based on the type of architect, include:
| • | Enterprise architects: Communicate primarily with corporate business owners and staff architects. They are experts in the vertical industry in which they work; they know and are responsible for meeting regulatory and compliance requirements, and set the overall vision and framework for the IT environment. Their main focus is on the IT environment from a strategic business perspective and they engage primarily in the envisioning stages of projects. |
| • | Solutions architects: Communicate mainly with business owners within a company and with the technical staff that delivers the solution. The projects they work on affect the enterprise and they design the solution to take advantage of the existing assets, integrate them into the existing environment, follow the enterprise architecture, and solve the business problems of the business owner or unit. They are primarily responsible for taking a project through envisioning and design, and are more consultative to the project manager during the development and deployment phases, ensuring the project stays true to the architecture, timelines, and budgets. If problems occur, they are escalated to the solutions architect. They work with one or more business owner at a time to create line of business-based solutions that integrate with the existing infrastructure and can be supported by the operations group. They typically do not manage the technical staff that is delivering the solution, therefore, solutions architects must demonstrate their skills as a technologist and persuade the staff regarding the validity and approach to the solution. The approach they take to creating architecture is to gather business requirements, select the technologies that provide the best solution, and then identify the products available that will best fit the solution they are proposing, based on the details of the project. Key areas of focus include integration, workflow, and applications (purchased, developed, and business). |
| • | Infrastructure architects: Communicate mainly with operations managers who are responsible for maintaining the IT environment and end users, and with the engineers that maintain specific areas of the infrastructure. They typically report through the IT group and are responsible for creating an architecture that meets the business and service level agreement requirements of the business owners and supports the applications and solutions that are required to operate their day-to-day businesses. They are primarily responsible for taking a project through envisioning and design, and are more consultative to the project manager during the development and deployment phases, ensuring the project stays true to the architecture, timelines, and budgets. If problems occur, they are escalated to the infrastructure architect. Infrastructure architects identify future needs based on current trends and design solutions to support the business needs. They work with all the solutions and applications architects in a corporation to ensure that the requirements for upcoming solutions can be met, or they provide suggestions for alternative solutions. They typically have authority over the technologists engaged on a particular project, and can demand compliance instead of persuade technologists, but still must be able to gain the technical respect of the technologists. Key areas of focus include physical network, security, storage, network operating systems, application platforms, desktop operating systems, messaging, management, or operations. |
| • | Technology-specific architects: Communicate mainly with the solutions or infrastructure architects, IT and application decision makers and with the technologists. As soon as product decisions for architecture have been made, the product architect, with a deep level of experience and knowledge of the products being used, comes in to help develop the more specific product architecture. The product architect identifies business requirements as they apply to the product or domain, and drives the project through envisioning and planning much like the infrastructure architect but within this narrower scope. They typically report through the infrastructure architect and IT group and are responsible for creating a product architecture that meets the business and service level agreement requirements of the business owners. They are primarily responsible for taking a specific product or domain implementation or migration project through envisioning and design, and are more consultative to the project manager during the development and deployment phases, ensuring the project stays true to the architecture, timelines, and budgets. If problems occur, they are escalated to the product architect. Product architects identify future needs based on current trends within the specific domain and design solutions to support the business needs. They work with infrastructure architects in a corporation to keep them up-to-date on these trends and advances in the particular product or domain to ensure the requirements for upcoming solutions can be met and to identify risks and opportunities within these trends. They typically have authority over the technologists engaged on their projects, and must be able to gain the technical respect of these technologists while at the same time rationalizing architecture decisions with IT decision makers and the infrastructure architects. |
