Have you heard this? I have. Not once, several times…
Let me ask a question…
What is the single most important thing to deliver as a Digital Architect?
Answer: The ability to create the right architecture?
It’s common sense – isn’t it?
But what’s the right architecture?
The solution that takes on the load, delivers the expected throughput and keeps the spend on check!
But to reach there, you and I as Digital Architects need to create a blueprint on basis of solid (or SOLID) principles, be open minded to see and analyze the implications of the architecture over a longer period of time. And finally, we need to communicate the values of impacts of the architecture to the stakeholders – the ones that sponsor the build of the solution, the ones who will build it, the ones who are going to operate it.
To make each of them aware about the values of architecture, you should not start your conversation from the architecture. You should start the conversation from the business context and the ways and means of running the business with a target state solution that we propose. The business context, the value of the solution, the implications of the solution choices and the outcomes.
In conversations like these, we as solution architects are assessed, consulted, tested, challenged, confronted, respected, revered. These are the moments of truth in the life of a solution architect.
As the world has leapfrogged to Digital economy, the average life-span of organizations are shrinking faster that we think (the average is less than 10 years today), the existence of business more acutely depends on the soundness of solutions of the Digital ecosystem. And the need to make the business view of the solution accessible to all stakeholders has never been more critical.
Do you still say Business Architecture is dead?