About twenty-five years ago at Hewlett-Packard company, I remember putting together a presentation on a topic I don’t remember, and getting feedback, which I do remember, from my boss that I needed to communicate “in the language of the business”, rather than that of technology. I remember reworking the presentation and showing it to my boss a second time. He said, to my disappointment, that I was still using the language of technology!
This was in the early years of the web, before the smartphone, at the very beginning of the tsunami of the consumerization of the technology. Today, virtually everything we do involves IT, and as the architecture practice leader at a financial services company, I have the opposite challenge: end-user leaders are well-versed in technology, and they request specific changes to our core business applications and their integrations with critical partner systems. I am now in the position of both supporting their immediate needs that require architecture, but also asking them to talk to me about their needs “in the language of the business” so my team and I can develop relevant architectures and roadmaps.
For the past fifteen years, I have worked in financial services companies as an enterprise architect, chief architect, or architecture practice leader. Gartner calls these companies “information factories” for good reason. Their products are information-based, and IT is ubiquitous in their operations.
In information factories today, and in many parts of other companies, nearly everyone requires intimate knowledge of technology at some level. Contact center agents and their management must understand the technology platforms they operate. Financial analysts must process data in data warehouses and use sophisticated presentation tools. Business developers must pitch corporate technology capabilities and be conversant in the technology integrations required for new customers or partners. Auditors must understand technology well enough to assess regulatory compliance and determine the adequacy of business controls. Senior leaders must scrutinize technology investments, make sure their organizations’ requirements are documented and prioritized, monitor systems development effort, and plan for complex integration and migration efforts.
Additionally, in corporate departments such as HR and Finance where few if any business processes are competitive differentiators, the adoption of new ERP platforms and other software products typically reshapes operations. Instead of customizing software and documenting differentiated processes for these areas, organization often adopt the structures and processes supported out-of-the-box by the industry-leading products they implement.
Architects must therefore cultivate the technical knowledge necessary to build and deliver on trusted advisor relationships. Business architects must have functional knowledge of the applications that shape and enable the business processes, and strategic knowledge of how technology evolution impacts their organizations and industries. Application architects must have both functional and technical knowledge of the products they support; data architects must know their company’s conceptual, logical, and physical data as well as the technology that manages it. Finally, infrastructure architects, of course, must be technical experts.
Furthermore, a working proof-of-concept (PoC) is often the best way to gain stakeholder buy-in on an innovative concept. Sometimes, architects can guide PoC developers, but often must deliver PoCs without such help.
Fortunately, it is extremely convenient for architects to acquire new technology skills or refresh old ones. Organizations like Coursera, Udemy and EdX deliver inexpensive courses on just about every subject, and platform vendors like Microsoft and Amazon Web Services offer free platform accounts and tutorials.
Over thirty years ago, an IT recruiter advised me to “stay technical until you are interviewed in ComputerWorld”. That is still sound advice.
For those lacking technical roots, it is never too late to become more technically savvy, especially with additional assistance from GenAI.
Authored by Iver Band, EA Principals Senior Instructor and ArchiMate Expert