Zang Jing Ge: the way of the architect

The job of IT architect is a strange one.

Many people don’t really know what IT architects do (I’m pretty sure that I have never given a convincing account of my job to my non-technical friends and family).

Even fewer people understand what makes one architect better than another.

But every team knows when they’ve got a good one: problems seem to get solved quicker, decisions seem to get made faster, and the team has someone to turn to when they have questions like ‘How in the world does that work?’ or ‘How on Earth are we going to get it to do that?’

In the HSBC Technology team we believe three things about architects.

First, we believe that, whatever architects do, and whatever makes them great, we need more of them.

Second, we believe that we have figured out at least some of the features of great architects.

And third, we believe that these features can be learned.