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Featured in this week’s spotlight is Maryam Aldhewalia, Enterprise Architecture Manager of Solutions by STC.
Aldhewalia has close to ten years of experience in driving digital transformation and establishing new practices.
During her career, she has led Enterprise Architecture & EA Governance office establishment strategic projects as well as implemented new services such as assessments and market researches to enable top management in the decision making.
She has also enabled technology investment control to reduce wasted enterprise costs, obtain higher ROI, and enable innovation adoption.
Below, Aldhewalia shares some of her insights about her successful career and what she sees in the future.
Question: How did you get your start in the industry?
Answer: Getting started in the enterprise architecture industry in 2019 marked a pivotal moment in my career, I transitioned from a strategic planner into a role that demanded strategic vision and deep analysis expertise. As a chief architect, my journey was shaped by a combination of professional experience, continuous learning, and a passion for solving complex organizational challenges.
In the early stages, my background in Technology Governance provided a solid foundation for understanding the intricacies of delivering successful planning of technical changes within organizations. However, I soon realized that to drive meaningful change and adopt innovation at a broader level, I needed to delve deeper into enterprise architecture.
The decision to pursue enterprise architecture stemmed from recognizing its critical role in aligning IT strategy with business goals and the lack of Saudi professionals in the country. At that time, it was a new mandate for governmental organizations to implement the practice to raise digital maturity.
My journey involved acquiring a variety of certifications, the most recent certificate is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) from Carnegie Mellon University to support leading digital transformation initiatives effectively.
One of the most rewarding aspects of my journey in enterprise architecture has been witnessing the tangible impact of architectural decisions on organizational performance. Whether it was optimizing legacy systems to improve operational efficiency or designing scalable architectures to support business expansion, each project presented unique challenges and opportunities for innovation.
Q: What is your current responsibility and what is your typical day like?
A: As the Manager of Business & Technology Architecture, my current responsibilities encompass a broad spectrum of strategic architecture planning, technical oversight, and leadership in aligning business objectives with technological capabilities. This role bridges the gap between business and IT, ensuring that our organization’s technological investments and innovations support and drive our overall business goals.
A typical day in my role involves a variety of activities that blend managerial duties with architecture oversight, such as assessing gaps on different layers, building target roadmaps to cover those gaps, supporting the company’s subsidiaries in practice, and driving decision-making to the sought objectives and aligned visions.
In addition, I am part of a committee that studies the upcoming technical changes and adoption of leading innovations by providing recommendations based on assessed leading solutions in the market.
Q: What do you like most about your job?
A: What I find most fulfilling about my role as a manager is building new capabilities in the enterprise architecture field. In addition to the internal effort, I raise establishment awareness to external organizations who are planning to establish the practice by sharing our journey and lessons learned for a powerful impact on Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.
Q: What trends in architecture are you looking out for the rest of 2023 and 2024?
A: As an architecture professional, staying ahead of emerging trends is crucial to effectively plan and execute strategies that drive business value. One of those trends is integrating AI and machine learning into architecture design to support AI-driven insights, automation, and predictive analytics to enhance decision-making and operational efficiency. Another trend is implementing the citizen development practice by the adoption of low-code/no-code platforms within enterprises. Enterprise architects should explore ways to incorporate these platforms into their architecture. This trend will accelerate the application delivery, empower business users to create solutions without hindering IT operations, and streamline development processes.
Q: What is one thing we can do to support or increase the women in architecture?
A: I believe the number of women architects is still low in the country and one impactful action can be taken by actively promoting and facilitating mentorship and networking opportunities for women interested in this field. Since it is a rare subject to be taught in universities, providing these opportunities for women will help in enhancing their technical and leadership in areas relevant to enterprise architecture. This action will empower them to advance in their careers, shift their career, and take on more challenging roles.