Architectural design is not a one-time event, rather, it's an iterative process shaped by continuous discussions with stakeholders and business units.
This article highlights the important need for organizations to recognize the significance of maintaining dedicated architectural representation throughout the project execution process. Also, it tries to underscore the importance of ensuring that the selected candidate possesses the essential characteristics and skills to excel in the role.
While some organizations happily embrace the gradual approach to development, such strategy requires significant time and effort commitments that directly translates to financial implications. As a result, the services-based industry faces its unique set of challenges, particularly when dealing with small to mid-sized customer accounts where implementation teams often are forced to prioritize development of quick solutions and adoption of tactical approaches.
Let's take a look at some practical challenges, not limited to but including a few, that teams or organizations usually face attempting to streamline deliveries within constraints of limited time and human capital.
- Continuous Architectural Presence: Architects should be actively engaged throughout the project implementation to give critical technical leadership to development teams, ensure implementation conformance, resolve decision conflicts, and defend decisions to stakeholders and developers, however, in the services sector, when projects are lasting from weeks to months and with ambitious timelines, adopting this philosophy quickly becomes impractical, be it due to project's budgetary constraints or due to lack of matured architectural practices, resulting in substandard services or temporary solutions for the customers.
- Achieving Effective Architecture Representation: Despite including the architectural representation, some teams still face ineffectiveness largely due to the 'Architect' role's inefficiency to operate. This is often attributed to a misalignment of skills or missing domain expertise, but may not be the individual's fault completely. In organizations lacking established practices, individuals are often labeled as 'Architects' based on their problem-solving abilities or experience number, however they often lack essential soft skills required to lead and navigation tough discussions. When deployed externally (as vendor or contractors), overall effectiveness reduces significantly due to a lack of awareness or missing sense of inclusivity in the customer's environment where external partners have least control and the say over taking design decisions. In reality, only a few 'Architects' prefer leading teams with full accountability throughout and while not all people without training or prior experience will fail, most may struggle. I've been fortunate to work with a select group in the past who demonstrated these skills, providing valuable insights and lessons.
- Balancing Delivery Pressure with Development Realities: From my past experience, I recognize this as a complex issue, especially in small to mid-sized service organizations. On one side, there's a constant need to meet numerical objectives, acquire new leads, and retain existing accounts, and on the other side the delivery teams continue to face tight deadlines. The purist thinking is typically discouraged in such settings, as the focus gets shifted to making rapid delivery. Prioritizing delivery first and addressing improvements later becomes a pragmatic strategy, and the latter doesn't always happen, even if it does, ends up costing a lot more to both parties involved.
In conclusion, addressing these challenges requires a holistic approach. Establishing and promoting architectural best practices, emphasizing the value of continuous architectural involvement, and providing soft skills training may considerably improve the Architects' success in the services industry.
Balancing current business requirements with the long-term advantages of establishing an Internal Architecture practice or at-least an effort towards setting one, still remain crucial for service organizations.
