“An A-Z Guide to Being an Architect” by Mark Bloodworth and Marc Holmes is a lighthearted article outlining a number of key attributes of architects. An extract is below. Is there any important attributes missing?
A is for Advocate
“I think you’ll find that you really don’t want to do it like that.”
See also: Abstraction, Agile, Acrobat, Availability, Analysis, Applications
B is for Balance
“A little more to the left. Keep going. A bit more. Not that far. Sorry.”
See also: Best Practice, Benchmarks, Building Blocks
C is for Coach
“Work through the pain!”
See also: Communication, Champion, Context, Collaboration, C#
D is for Dependencies
“What happens if I unplug this? Oh!”
See also: Design, Development, Delivery, Domain, Documentation
E is for Evangelist
“Let me show you something really cool.”
See also: Enterprise, Engineer, Enthusiast
F is for Frameworks
“How do I get there?”
See also: Facts, Functionality, F#, Firewall
G is for Governance
“It is the opinion of the subcommittee…”
See also: Generative Programming, Generalist
H is for Human Dynamics
“The system would have been a success if it hadn’t been for those pesky users!”
See also: Heterogeneous Environments, Heated Debates, High Performance Computing
I is for Innovation
“The lifeblood of any organization”
See also: Integrity, Inspiration, Infrastructure
J is for Judgment
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
See also: Java, Just In Time
K is for Knowledge
“If only I knew then what I know now.”
See also: Kernel, Keyboard
L is for Leadership
“I’m behind you all the way.”
See also: Lean, Linux, Latency, Load Balancing
M is for Modeling
“So, to help us visualize how this might work, I made his model using nothing but twigs and guitar strings.”
See also: Management, Maintainability, Messaging
N is for ‘N-tier’
“A house of cards”
See also: Needs, Networks, Nonfunctional Requirements, .NET
O is for Object Orientation
“Encapsulate this!”
See also: Operations, Object-Relational Mapping, Operating System, OLAP
P is for Patterns
“I think I see something emerging from the chaos. Is it a zebra?”
See also: Principles, Platforms, Politics, Performance, Process
Q is for Quality
“Good enough isn’t good enough.”
See also: Qualifications, Queries, Quantification, Quantum Computing
R is for Roadmaps
“You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road.”
See also: Requirements, Realization
S is for Strategy
“What are we trying to achieve?”
See also: Services, Software, Standards, Security, Scalability
T is for Thinking
“I think, therefore I clearly have too much time on my hands.”
See also: Technology, Transparency
U is for Understanding
“I do believe you’ve got it.”
See also: UML, Unix
V is for Values
“Explain to me again why we’re doing this…”
See also: Virtualization, Visualization, Views
W is for Whiteboard
“It’s probably easier if I just draw a picture.”
See also: Workflow, Wikis, Windows, Web
X is for XML
See also: XSD, XPath, XQuery, XAML, XOML
Y is for YAGNI [You Ain’t Gonna Need It.]
“Stay on target! Stay on target!”
See also: YAML, Yottabyte
Z is for Zeitgeist
“All the cool people are doing it.”
See also: Zeal, Zettabyte, Zero Day Exploit
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