Happy Holiday Weekend To My Canadian Friends:-
Some of you luck ones may have fled your cubes, offices or project rooms – and for those of you left, you might be in for a little reading.
If you have been considering the Canadian training coming up October 20-24th, there are still 3 spots available in the IT Architect Boot Camp workshop, and 4 spots in the Solution Architect workshop. It will exciting as the exercises and labs have been a real treat to create and will be fun and challenging for the participants. I truly wanted the attendees to experience what it was like to be put into the position of being an IT Architect, and a Solution Architect in a variety of situations.
For those of you watching the Google Group posts, or the IT tool box posts, there has been one of the most lively weeks I’ve seen for a really long time with many chiming in on the “types of architects” threads. I’ve almost jumped in many times this week, and it took real discipline to get back to the training preparation I have been doing, and to keep my eyes off of the email, as well as dismal world news that is flooding our eyes, ears and households.
My hope for all of you is that Architecture is, and will remain to be alive, well and thriving in your companies and that those around you see what an incredible job you are doing with your projects and programs. I hope you are in a position to enhance and tune your skills in the soft skills area, as well as in the areas in which you consult with peers and business folk alike. During these tough times, you may be called upon to come up with some creative ways to continue business with less funding, and help the teams in your finance areas plan quickly.
If we can use some of the scenario analysis skills we’ve gained during our architecture training, as well as skills as an organizational politician and consultant, we should be able to add value to our business teams as they are trying to figure out how to continue to move towards corporate goals. One of the soft skills we rarely touch on is empathy, and just trying to really understand what they are going through, before pressing on with the transitions that we had planned for systems inthe company is one of the things we can do to help.
It is your job as the architects to constantly keep a finger on the pulse of your business stakeholders. Rather than keeping our heads down and surging forward with our work, we need to check in and make sure that they still feel that we are going in the right direction and that we are still spending our time and energy on the right things.
Happy Thanksgiving to my friends in Canada, and Happy Architecting to everyone.
Sharon
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