Should we teach the green field or the space capsule?

How do we help people become technology architects?

I think that we should start by asking ourselves what it’s like to be a new technology architect. Which of these best describes your first day as a solution architect?

This . . ?

You step into your new realm. The grass is lush and green. Crystal waterfalls sparkle in the background. Hills, forests and valleys stretch away into the distance. You know that the landscape is beautiful: you just need to find a vantage point from which to see it all. You need to build a tower high enough to gain perspective, but what should you build it from? Ivory?

Or this . . ?

You wake up with a start. Your surroundings are lurching and spinning around you. You seem to be in some sort of spacecraft. Looks something like Apollo 13. Gas is venting and there is smoke in the air. You spot your crew mates: they are frantically flipping switches, pressing buttons and turning dials. They turn to you in relief when they see that you are awake: ‘Help!’ they say. ’Tell us how this thing works!’

Of course, these are exaggerations. Few of us have ever found ourselves in a new job which turned out to be the perfect green field. And few of us have found ourselves in situations as perilous and urgent as an out of control space capsule.

However, I expect that most of find the space capsule more familiar than the green field. As architects, we routinely inherit situations which we did not create, find that they are out of control to some degree, that there are lots of people who don’t quite know how things work, but they are flipping switches and turning dials anyway . . . and they expect us to know the answers.

I believe that part of the responsibility of every experienced technology architect is to grow the profession: to find people with the attitude, aptitude and ambition to become architects, and to help them make that career move. 

However, if it is hard to find these people, it is even harder to prepare them for the first day on the job. Indeed, many architects don’t get much preparation at all: they just get placed into a role as an architect, given a job description and a set of standards they’re supposed to follow, and thrust into a project. They wake up to find themselves in the space capsule.

In HSBC Technology, we have been trying to do better than this: to help people understand what it means to be an architect, and to prepare for the realities of the job. We run an Architecture Fundamentals course for people interested in making the move, including specific programmes to help women join the profession (there are not enough women technology architects).

These courses have been successful, and we have many new solution architects in the team as a result. However, when we reviewed the courses recently, we realised that they didn’t do enough to prepare people for day one. They included case studies based on real projects, and they introduced students to practical skills and techniques. However, they also started as many architecture courses do: by focusing first on business capabilities, business modelling and other aspects of true enterprise architecture. These are all useful skills, and essential when trying to build strategies or construct portfolios of transformation initiatives. But they are also much nearer to the green field than the space capsule.

So, we are refreshing our training programmes, and building them around the real world experience of the solution architect: the experience of trying to figure things out in conditions of ambiguity and urgency, of being accountable for things that you don’t quite understand, of trying to get people to pause and let you think, when they won’t stop flipping switches!

This means that, as well as teaching architectural thinking, technology skills and modelling techniques, we are also trying to teach the more difficult skills of stakeholder management and influencing, of explaining complex ideas in simple terms, and of knowing when to ask for help. We try to give them answers to questions like, ‘What do I do when the project manager isn’t listening to me?’, ‘What do I do when the technology is new to me?’ and ‘What do I do when I realise that I got it wrong?’ As well as getting professional help, we use our experienced architects as teachers: people who have had to ask and answer these questions many times in their career.

And, of course, we try to help people follow the principles of Zang Jing Ge: technical excellence, communication mastery and leadership power.

If you are fortunate enough to find yourself in a true green field, take the time to appreciate the view before you start building. And please don’t build an ivory tower: you can get the perspective you need from the top of the tallest hill.

And if you find yourself in the space capsule, don’t panic. Even if your company doesn’t run a structured training and preparation programme, there are many others who have been there before you: get on the radio and ask for help. You are not alone.