deltalounge

Recently there was a small survey in the company that employs me. The questions boiled down to the Twitter question:

What are you doing?

or what have you been doing during the last year. Since this question was aimed at architects, it should give some insight in the diversity of tasks for the various types of architects. Reading the results there were two conclusions to be drawn:

Architects have an even more diverse job than I imagined

Here are some examples:

• “Translate” a technical complex strategic document to a message we can communicate;
• Write a strategic information plan;
• Give an impact analysis of the projected move to open source for our company;
• Write a functional design based on requirements;
• Define an action plan to get our 3th SOA project into production ASAP;
• Define a project start architecture;
• Implement an enterprise wide Single Sign On and provisioning solution;
• Create a mobile application based on MS technology;
• Reduce storage costs;
• Deliver a Proof of Concept/Technology;
• Give the arguments: Service Bus or not?

My advice:

next time someone tells you that she needs an architect on the project, you immediately ask what kind of questions this “role” has to answer.

The way questions are answered is even more diverse

The answers of my colleagues were very different on various dimensions. First of all the length of the answers, where some of them needed a few sentences, others elaborated using several pages. Some mentioned technology others didn’t – even when the question was tempting them.
Another difference was that some gave the customers question or assignment, and others answered describing their approach to get to the result. A few grabbed the opportunity to promote themselves stating awards they received, and presentations they held on important boards.

Once again this proves to me: Question and answer can never be separated from context, and who is answering the question.