What are the best practices for evaluating system architecture skills for a promotion?

1 Define your goals and criteria

Before you seek a promotion, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will be assessed. Do you want to lead a team, a project, or a domain? Do you want to focus on a specific technology, methodology, or industry? Do you want to improve your communication, collaboration, or problem-solving skills? You should align your goals with the expectations and standards of your organization, your manager, and your peers. You should also identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics that will measure your impact and contribution as a system architect.

3 Showcase your portfolio and achievements

Another way to evaluate your system architecture skills is to showcase your portfolio and achievements to your potential promotors. You should document and present your work in a clear, concise, and compelling way. You should highlight how you have applied your system architecture skills to design and implement systems that meet the requirements, constraints, and trade-offs of various scenarios. You should also demonstrate how you have used your system architecture skills to improve the quality, performance, reliability, scalability, security, and usability of the systems. You should also show how you have contributed to the system architecture community, such as by sharing your knowledge, best practices, lessons learned, or feedback.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?