Value To The Organisation

Roles are only created when gaps appear that cannot be filled by other resources or roles and that to return obvious value to the organisation. With increasing dependence of businesses on the products of the ICT industry, Solution Architecture has filled a valuable role in both the product development chain and intervening between business & technology, acting an ‘interpreter’.

The interpretation demanded is that of business need (often articulated by a Business Analyst) to viable technical solution (implemented by technology Constructors). In addition, the Solution Architect has assisted the Project Manager to assess risk, identify required resources & estimate cost in the planning of technology implementations projects.

Therefore, the Solution Architect fills the void among the roles of Project Manager, Business Analyst & technology Constructor, as illustrated in the diagram below.

These roles have direct parallels in the civil engineering construction industry, with the exception of the Business Analyst, which could be associated with the role of Surveyor.

As with the building industry, without the critical role of architecture, technology solutions have a tendency of failing in their business objectives, an unfortunate norm of the last few decades of IT implementations.

Hiring A Solution Architect

Solution architects may be hired either to facilitate a specific project that includes a large technology component or to act in a permanent capacity to support on-going technical design.

Project-based solution architecture commonly utilise contractors for terms between 6-18 months, where, the scope of work is usually well-defined & approved funding finite.

Permanently employed solution architects are typically recruited by a consulting or professional services organisation, where the services of the architect are subcontracted or outsourced to service the technology implementation projects of other organisations.

In general, the skills & experience of a solution architect are usually only required for projects of defined scope & duration. This is a characteristic differentiator between Solution Architects & Enterprise Architects, where the latter is a strategic & management role.

Solution architects are often selected & hired on the basis of their reputation & relevance of the pedigree of their experience, set against the specific needs of the hiring organisation. Again, a parallel can be drawn from the civil engineering construction industry, where architects are engaged for specific construction projects and often invited based on reputation & match of experience to the customer’s desired building style.

Also, it’s worth noting that solution architects are creative, multi-disciplinary and often desire variety in their work. Project-to-project work suits this personality, although this observation is too general to apply individually. This does not necessarily apply for domain architects, especially those that are more closely aligned with a critical business function.

For example, one will often find permanently employed network architects maintaining existing, as well as building new, network infrastructure. Similarly, a software vendor is likely to retain the permanent services of software architects.