Chapter Eleven. Software Architecture: Career Advice

Soldiers in the military work hard and perform their best in environments that can be most unpredictable and are never what was described in any mission briefing or predeployment training. No soldier is successful just doing what he or she is told, but each soldier must also realize when extraordinary efforts are called for that go beyond the literal interpretation of orders. The key to succeed in military career is to be able to get the job done consistently, despite the often unforeseen external factors. In time, such track records are recognized and rewarded in the form of greater responsibilities and promotions. The career of a software architect follows a similar parallel in that a software architect also needs to demonstrate consistent achievement over time, regardless of the inevitable obstacles that are encountered.

To succeed as a software architect, one needs to have a different focus than that of either software project management or software development. Basic software development is concerned with completing software projects, defined as meeting the project requirements and providing basic customer satisfaction at project completion. Software project management must be concerned about both meeting timeliness of project completion and ensuring that specific financial measures are satisfied. To some extent, software project management must develop relationships with the customers that are strong enough to increase the chances of obtaining repeat business and additional referrals. A software architect must be concerned about delivering a product of sufficient quality. That the delivered product can not only satisfy current requirements but also be modified easily to support additional requirements that arise after system delivery is a direct reflection on the skills of the software architect. Serving as the custodian of software quality puts the software architect on a different career path than workers in either of the other two IT areas. While crossover is fairly commonplace, there are unique opportunities to develop within the industry purely as a software architect. A potential roadmap that will take the software architects from being solid corporate contributors to making names for themselves as software industry experts is suggested for software architects.