How does a System Architect collaborate with other teams in an organization?

A solution architect in important in converting Business requirements to Technical requirements. The most important task of an architect is to understand the business ask, both said and unsaid information. Remember, A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved, therefore an architect should be able to technically understand the problem and provide guiding solutions illustrating pros and cons for each. Guiding principles: - Aligning with business goals and objectives - Managing non-functional requirements - Ensuring scalability, maintainability, and extensibility - Balancing trade-offs between performance, cost, and complexity - Adhering to industry best practices and standards Incorporating security and compliance considerations

It is crucial to have a system architect as they serve as the adhesive facilitating interaction among different applications within an organization. The decisions made by the architect have a profound impact on resource conservation, the prevention of redundant solutions, and the establishment of a reference architecture. This ensures that all technical resources have a clear understanding of their roles and maintain standardized solutions throughout the organization.Consequently,this allows keeping standard integrations and maintain Scalable and flexible architecture in the organization.

A System Architect plays a crucial role in an organization by ensuring that the IT infrastructure aligns with the company’s goals. They collaborate with other teams through several key activities. Defining System Requirements: They work closely with stakeholders to understand and define the system requirements that support business objectives. Designing Solutions: They design the overall system architecture, including software, hardware, and networks, to meet the defined requirements. Guiding Development Teams: System Architects provide guidance to development teams to ensure that the implementation aligns with the architectural design. Interfacing with Project Managers: They often work with project managers to help plan the project.

While an architect understands the requirements it’s important to do - System appreciation done as a prerequisite. - understand how the requirements fit into the current eco system. - are there partners(product teams) within the enterprise who have done similar/fragmented pieces of same ask, factor in those in fitment analysis - ask/ put use case diagrams so that even a fresher in the team can understand. - and of course bring in non functional requirements to the table

Clear communication and collaboration are critical elements in the role of a system architect. The architect must work closely with other teams to comprehensively understand their needs and requirements. This helps ensure the system design aligns with the organization's goals and objectives. The architect must also collaborate with other teams to integrate the system into the existing infrastructure, ensuring seamless compatibility. Effective communication and collaboration are vital for timely project delivery, and the system architect is well-equipped to facilitate this.

As a system architect, thinking along a few more dimensions to the ones already called out can significantly enhance value to the Business - 1) Security - Ensure you incorporate latest Authentication standards like MFA, OAuth2, JWT and choose architectural components like Identity providers, API gateways that support these standards. Identify with the help of business sensitive data that needs special encryption at rest and in flight, again choose components (databases, caching servers, storage volumes) and frameworks (secret server, PKI) that enable these out-of-the box. 2)Resilience -based on the availability requirements gathered in Step 1, define multi-AZ (local HA) or multi-regional architectures, choose enabling components/patterns.

As a system architect, considering additional dimensions can indeed add significant value to a business. Here are a few key dimensions that might be worth exploring. Scalability: Designing systems that can scale efficiently with the growth of the business is crucial. This includes not just scaling up but also scaling down when necessary to manage costs effectively. Security: With the increasing frequency and sophistication of cyber attacks, security must be a top priority from the ground up in system architecture. User Experience (UX): Systems should be designed with the end-user in mind, ensuring ease of use, accessibility, and overall satisfaction. Data Management: Efficient data handling, storage, and retrieval mechanisms.

The architecture of the system should be very linear and title re-called coupled, specially the database should be per microservice distributed to a single database.

I've had the privilege of working with some amazing system architectures, and the best ones aren't necessarily the ones who know everything. The best ones know what questions to ask, who to ask and trust, and are able to communicate the important factors to their "trusted council" to get the information they need to come up with an architecture. In other words, they are the ones who are able to parse through the sea of information and understand the critical factors in the system, run them by other experts/specialists, and collaborate to come up with an architecture that makes sense. Oh and of course document everything along the way.

I believe that the most important trait of a system architect is creativity, in terms of always pushing towards as simple as possible and thus efficient solutions, sometimes off the beaten path. Beyond technical skills and the ability to understand and shape the system requirements, creativity is often key to a successful product definition. Creativity may also lead to patents that protect your product and thus provide market leverage. If it works don't touch is a good advice, but sometimes you might be able to bring the old solution to a new level on the technical evolution spiral, without lousing reliability. E.g., creating shared comms at an incident scene is old, but using ad hoc 5G NW slicing for this purpose is significantly better.

Communicating the architecture of a system to other teams is a crucial step in ensuring everyone involved understands the system’s design and how it functions. This can involve creating documentation, diagrams, and models that clearly depict the system’s components and their interactions. It’s also important to hold meetings or workshops to discuss the architecture, answer questions, and gather feedback. This collaborative approach helps to align the teams on the project’s goals and technical strategies, facilitating a more cohesive and efficient working environment. Would you like tips on how to effectively communicate this information.

In Architecture, One thing that always is the case is , where we want to go in 3 - 5 years. and What we want to do in 3 - 5 months. The communication should reflect this. We should have clear long term diagram and clear short term architecture leading up to long term. Having 2 views , helps to quickly flex between the 2 depending on whom you are talking to and it also creates clarity in what we are doing and why we are doing in short term and in long term. Each Architect should spend some time in creating some artifact to help message this out to various tech and non tech audience.

Communication is very important for any new requirement and new architect. In my 25 years of work experience, I realize most architectural issues arise due to miscommunication. Designing any system is one challenge but communicating with a team and understanding their challenges is another issue. Communication always works in both directions.

One valuable practice I've discovered is the implementation of Architectural Decision Records (ADRs). Utilizing ADRs enables the systematic creation, documentation, tracking, and communication of architectural decisions across teams, departments, and companies.

After definifining the initial architecture it is very important to communicate it with the stakeholders (internal team, business owners, other integrated teams), using easy to understand diagrams(system design diagram, class diagram, sequence diagram). It is very important in this phase to be open to feedback and make sure all stakeholders are aligned before the implementation phase to have all of them promoters while the implementation phase, also the feedback might spot some gaps or bottlenecks to iterate over the architecture again.

One of the main points throughout development is knowing how to identify architectural flaws, overestimated load, security flaws and others, and it should not be shameful to admit the flaw and look for a better solution. The sooner architecture choice flaws are adjusted (even during development), the better and less costly the final project will be, even if this involves refactoring a lot of code and consumes considerable resources. Because going back (with the project already in production), and then refactoring, ends up being unfeasible.

A system architect is responsible for designing and implementing the overall architecture of a system or application. To effectively accomplish this task, it is essential that the system architect collaborates closely with other teams within the organization. The system architect works closely with software development teams to translate requirements into technical solutions. If the system requires a user interface, the system architect must collaborate with the UX/UI design teams. The system architect works with the testing and quality teams to define appropriate testing strategies. The system architect works with operations teams to ensure that the system architecture is supported and managed effectively over the long term.

Optimization, Modernization, Lift & Shift approaches have been recognized on case by case basis. This helped the Project to reach the projected targets.

As an architect you need to make sure all teams use consistent coding standards and meets all security requirements as well. Writing clean and secure code is most important to maintain overall integrity of the system. Architects also make sure design documents are followed and ensure that during code reviews. Plus they also ensure proper unit tests are executed and the code is scalable and ready to handle anticipated load by guiding the teams to run stress tests on their code modules. Finally architects also assist in defining integration contracts when heterogeneous systems need to transfer data back and forth using APIs.

Coordenar o desenvolvimento é uma responsabilidade importante de um arquiteto de sistemas. Eles trabalham em estreita colabora??o com as equipes de desenvolvimento para garantir que a arquitetura seja implementada de acordo com as especifica??es e requisitos do sistema. Isso envolve a defini??o de diretrizes de codifica??o, revis?es de código, resolu??o de problemas de design e a garantia de que os padr?es e práticas arquiteturais sejam seguidos durante o desenvolvimento. Além disso, os arquitetos de sistemas também fornecem orienta??o técnica e suporte às equipes de desenvolvimento, ajudando a resolver desafios técnicos complexos que possam surgir durante o processo de implementa??o.

Integrar o sistema é uma etapa crítica no trabalho de um arquiteto de sistemas. Isso envolve garantir que todos os componentes e subsistemas funcionem juntos de maneira harmoniosa e eficiente. Os arquitetos de sistemas s?o responsáveis por projetar e implementar estratégias de integra??o, como o uso de APIs, servi?os web ou barramentos de servi?os, garantindo que os diferentes módulos do sistema possam se comunicar e compartilhar dados de forma eficaz. Além disso, eles também supervisionam os testes de integra??o para garantir que o sistema como um todo funcione conforme o esperado. A integra??o bem-sucedida do sistema é fundamental para garantir a funcionalidade e a confiabilidade do produto final.

I have a great experience with integrating the system where we had involvement of various teams, collaboration worked out really well.

Integrating the system is crucial for a System Architect as it enables seamless interaction and data exchange between different components, applications, and systems within the organization. Integration ensures that the system operates cohesively with existing infrastructure and processes, maximizing efficiency and productivity. By integrating disparate systems, architects can eliminate data silos, reduce duplication of efforts, and streamline business operations. Moreover, integration facilitates real-time access to accurate and up-to-date information, empowering decision-makers with actionable insights.

As an architect, measure your success by how maintainable your solution is after go live. Any designed system that has many downtimes is a failure. Ensure from day 1 you consider the following: - Proper documentation - Identify the key components and their relationships - Choose appropriate technologies and frameworks - Implement modular and decoupled designs - Optimize for performance and resource usage - Plan for future growth and change

By understanding those other teams success criteria and key performance indicators and then highlighting their achievement in the proposed architecture.

Ele alinha as estratégias de desenvolvimento de sistemas com os objetivos da empresa, trabalhando de perto com equipes de desenvolvimento para garantir que as solu??es arquitet?nicas atendam aos requisitos de negócios e padr?es de qualidade. Além disso, colabora com equipes de opera??es para assegurar a eficiência e seguran?a das implementa??es, enquanto auxilia equipes de gerenciamento de projetos na defini??o de cronogramas e mitiga??o de riscos. Em resumo, o arquiteto de sistemas é um facilitador-chave na realiza??o de projetos tecnológicos bem-sucedidos, promovendo a colabora??o e alinhamento entre diferentes áreas da organiza??o.

Don't forget to give credit where it's due, and take responsibility if the architecture doesn't work. A system architect is a leader, and good leaders know how to share in their successes and not pass the blame on to others if the project doesn't succeed. Above any and all project goals, be kind to the people around you.

Steering the Agile Release Train (ART) Aligning on Solution/Enterprise Architecture Collaborating on Optimal System Design Guiding Teams on Implementation

Many times, architects are the folks who have big picture strategic thoughts. They have a unique view of the company’s goals and customer plans. Architects should help maintain roadmaps and help the overall organization align technologies to customer roadmaps, RFPs, etc. Collaboration should be both organic as well as intentional through lunch and learns, strategic coordination for proposals, and during program execution to ensure contracts are executing as expected to align to roadmaps.