As the age of technology continues to explode, it is essential that we do not gloss over the amount of learning and skill it takes to address the ever-increasing complexity of technology, society and business. This moment affords us a unique opportunity. To design our learning levels and to design our professionals. I thought I would take that opportunity to show some of the skills necessary in architecture and how important they are to creating the next generation of leaders.
As one person said to me just yesterday, “The current business environment does not allow the application of such deep learning and reflection in architecture. We have to get in and do what we can fast.” I hear similar quotes regularly. And that is ok, there are times when we have to move quickly. But there are many more times we need a deeply experienced professional to be able to move quickly!
How Do We Learn Deeply
What does it mean to learn a skill? It means to have repeated success at that competency, over and over with the guidance of someone even more experienced. It means understanding theory, practice, and what can go wrong!
I learned this watching a heart surgery many years ago. At the time, complications emerged and a more experienced surgeon was brought into the operating theater. He proceeded to mentor the more ‘junior’ surgeon (who was in his 50s) in the complexity that had emerged. To say life or death is exatly what this mentoring entailed. And it opened my eyes to what our industry is missing.
It is essential in architecture that we realize that a skill set is not an arbitrary thing. It isn’t learn one skill and you are done. It also isn’t learn any skill from any background and you’re in. It is the application of all of the identified and necessary skills combined that makes a distinguished architect. It is also important to understand the purpose and context of mastery. Working in a startup is very different from working in a large corporation. Industry can change things significantly as well.
Always remember that the profession’s purpose has to be paramount in the learning. For example, both doctors and lawyers have to deal with clients and need human interaction skills to be successful. Yet, the nature and implementation of these differ drastically. We will explore this point in a further article. However, do not underestimate the impact of changing the meaning of the profession while claiming similar skills. The current environment is rife with this kind of co-opting of the terminology and tools to alter the whole purpose of architecture fundamentally.
How Long It Takes
In medicine and other professions, an individual studies and practices for 7+ years to become fully independent, and they never stop learning. This learning is tracked by both mentors and the profession. Because medicine is so essential to humans it is important that professionals are measured and constantly update and hone their competencies.
These two steps are available in the Iasa Structured Mentoring Approach
Step 1 – Awareness
To start a competency, you learn its definitions, its theory and its techniques. This is the relatively simple part you get from classrooms, books and reviewing others work. This level of learning is literally all you can do in a classroom setting. It is indicative of our current environment that people almost always claim mastery after having taken a few courses while in reality this represents only the very beginning of understanding.
Step 2 – Application of Skill/Knowledge
Applying a skill multiple times in a semi-real environment is needed to test it out and to understand its basic execution. This is the equivalent of practicing the guitar, or writing proof of concept artifacts. It allows the professional a safe environment to build mental and muscle memory the knowledge and competency require.
Step 3 is only publicly available in the Iasa Professional Mentoring Approach – https://www.iasaglobal.org/structured-mentoring/
Step 3 – Experience in Real Environments with Mentoring
The most difficult and critical aspect of skill development in professions is actual application of the skill to real world scenarios, but with the added client safety of mentoring and guidance. There are two facets to this development. One of them is obvious, the safety of the client. In ‘important’ professions, newly minted or aspiring professionals are mentored through steps to speed the adoption of skills and to measure progress against expected outcomes. This allows the organization to achieve its outcomes while creating new professionals in a measurably faster and more stable way. It also reminds us that skill mastery is not a single thing. Professionals must employ skills together in complex ways to achieve full mastery.
Step 4 Represents the Iasa Board Certification Process – https://www.iasaglobal.org/iasa-professional/
Step 4 – Mastery of Skill
Mastery is as complex a topic as the skills themselves. Mastery levels are gathered in professions based on how well professionals who have years of experience execute a task compared with those that are still learning. However, mastery does not imply completion of learning. Distinguished architects are still learning, and still growing. No master within a profession ever achieves exactly the same skill proficiency across the skills taxonomy as another master. Some are better at the human side, some at the thechnical, some at the business. However, mastery can never equate to the mastery of a single compentency area. Otherwise you would have surgeons who could not deliver babies and similar problems. The entire professional body must retain excellence at the skills deemed differentiating during their early careers.
Step 5 is a required component in the Iasa CEU and mentoring programs
Step 5 – Update and Teaching of Skill
It is nice to believe that once an individual achieves a mastery level, they never need go back to that competency and update or refresh their knowledge. In most professions, this happens quite naturally as they practice within the field. However, it is absolutely critical in architecture that we address this topic. Too many of our ‘masters’ do not continue to practice the same field as they did when they became architects. Without this, the skill becomes atrophied over time. This is essential in all of the Core Competencies throughout history of every profession. Imagine a chief of medicine who has not seen a patient in 10 years! I bet you wouldn’t want to accept their medical advice.
Most professions require a degree of giving back to the junior members of the profession through mentoring. As a professional matures, it is essential that they learn to teach the skills they have mastered by helping others achieve similar skill levels. They also have the responsibility to make sure the entire profession has these skills available to them. Can you imagine a doctor not sharing a technique that would save lives? It is essential that while we respect IP and knowledge, we also remember that only through giving back to our profession will it achieve the kind of global recognition we need in society to achieve the next stage of business technology outcomes.
There are 5 Pillars
After decades of years of research, we found a relatively straightforward fact. The competencies make the architect. The title is relatively meaningless in any statistical way. As companies do not measure against shared competencies and most architect titles are given by way of management, it is necessary to look to an external competency model to understand architect excellence and deep learning.
Through focus groups, over 5000 surveys and interviews, and years of debate and measurement, we have compiled a dependable competency model for architects. Each of the pillars is essential to creating a professional who can navigate both employers and maintain a long-term career with a readable certainty of success. Remember, all of the competencies are necessary to master and maintain over an entire career. Without that, the individual will fall into another role.
The five pillars create a powerful support system for the architect profession. If we begin to measure architects’ experience and learning through this method instead of by title and employer size or, god forbid, a particular technology or role, we will have a much greater chance of achieving excellence in our field.
Business Technology Strategy
The keystone pillar of the competency model is business technology strategy. Though in many ways the competencies listed here are aligned with any business (valuation, investment planning, business fundamentals, etc) it is with a distinct technology outcome flavor. This grouping of competencies describe all of the business understanding necessary to participate as an equal with business clients. This pillar represents the uniting factor behind our professional value proposition. It also support further specialization in both business architects and more technical specializations.
Human Dynamics
People skills are one of the reasons many organizations switch to the the BTABoK competency model. These are competencies related to the development and delivery of our work in complex human ecosystems. Leadership, collaboration, situational awareness and forms of communication.
(Information) Technology Environment
The original pillar was titled IT Environment as it includes competencies necessary to interact in a complex technical environment. It includes the competency areas to understand technology in a modern world, such as application development, infrastructure, information (knowledge management). We are likely to change it to technical environment to remove associations with the group named IT as many of our architects report into other groups (systems engineering is common).
Design
Design was at first thought to be the differentiating factor of skills for architects. However, we were able to determine that design skills are simply one of the core pillars of competencies of an excellent architect. From modeling and patterns to whole systems thinking, the design pillar remains one of the most essential competency groups for architects to master before they move to truly senior roles.
Quality Attributes
Quality attributes were originally assigned to the Technology Environment area. They are the cross-cutting systems concerns that impact all Business Technology Strategy. Think of them as the structural forces and skills necessary to deliver. Security, reliability, performance etc. But they also include the sustainability, usability and other qualities which impact the overall value of our outcomes.
The 5 Rules of Specialization
The BTABoK follows very rigorous rules on what is recognized to be a specialization. This means that we do not follow fads in job ads or descriptions. Imagine if in medicine there was such variability in specializations. You would have a specialization per machine type and medical technique! Instead in the BTABoK have opted to follow the rules of professions. The five specializations are business, infrastructure, information, software and solution.
The Tenets of the BTABoK Specialization Method Include:
- All specializations must be based on the core competencies. (ex. business and software and infrastructure must all be architects first)
- All specializations must recognize the primary value proposition of the whole profession. (clients primarily use our services for similar types of things)
- All practicioners must be practitioners of a recognized specialization. Management positions are not considered specialization of architecture. This also applies to scope based roles (domain, program, etc)
- All specializations must have a recognizable competency model which does not interrupt or overlap fully with another specialization. (business and sofware work perfectly, application and software would not be separate specializations)
- Seniority and scope of influence are considered separately from specialization. The specialization remains the same. (a resident, associate or distinguished software architect are differences in seniority and certified skill, scope of influence is not titled or can be treated in the post fix ex. Professional Business Architect of the Consumer Banking Domain)
It is important to note that the BTABoK has no problem with other bodies of knowledge which are trying to achieve another purpose. We are a group of contributors who believe in and seek the full professionalization of BT Architecture. All our efforts are based solely in the study of how techniques which have served humanity well in other professions can and should be adapted to that aim.
I will be trying to highlight a special competency out of the BTABoK model every couple of weeks!