Defining the Role of the Chief Architect
A simple model of architect types sets the stage for an in-depth survey of roles and responsibilities
by Janaki Akella and Chris Barlow
Posted March 5, 2004
As the chief architect in your company's IT organization, you are probably playing a variety of roles ranging from enforcing standards to identifying emerging technology trends. You are likely fielding a host of requests to support the growing and changing needs of the business in a timely and cost-effective manner. In addition, as top-line growth is becoming more and more challenging, your business is likely adjusting its cost structures and looking to you to provide leadership by cutting down legacy application maintenance costs, promoting software reuse, and putting in place a flexible architecture.
Add to this the explosion of strategic outsourcing, with which a greater emphasis is placed on clearly articulating the scope of work being outsourced than has been ever done before in any IT organization. The result is that you may find yourself having to define in detail not only the current systems solution but also the target to which you would like the outsourcer to move.
All of this begs the question of what exactly is your job definition. Here, we begin to shape the answer to this question by doing two things: providing a framework of four models for thinking about the role of a chief architect, and describing some of the top-of-mind issues that we have heard. We would like to add to this by hearing your answers to: What issues you are facing as an architect today?
To this end, we will run the Enterprise Architect Magazine's Chief Architect Survey. We hope that many of you will actively participate to help us shape the answer to this important question.
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