Enterprise and solutions architect work in environments shaped by ever-increasing worldwide volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) coupled with the accelerating consumerization of solution development. Therefore, stakeholders are no longer content to request guidance from experts and wait for a response before acting; they want architects who can engage, figure out what frameworks and solutions are needed, and collaboratively and iteratively deliver them. Trust, influence, and leadership roles are earned in every engagement. Therefore, the essential skills for today’s enterprise and solutions architects go beyond what colleges and training vendors commonly teach. A list of these follows below. Some are more applicable to Enterprise Architects, others to Solutions Architects, but widespread familiarization for all architects of these is recommended: 

1. Consulting and Networking Skills: building affinity and trust – including continuous outreach to relevant communities, understanding business problems, and managing stakeholders, along with developing and delivering solutions. 

2. Systems thinking and engineering: understanding and evolving the components, relationships, and interactions within complex systems.

3. Spoken, written, and graphic communication: clear and precise use of English, the world language of business and technology, and the development of clear and compelling graphics.

4. Storytelling:  compelling narration that emotionally engages audiences even before they fully grasp critical content.

4. Business acumen: judging where architectural efforts will make the biggest impact, and, for prioritized initiatives, managing stakeholders and delivering solutions appropriate for the enterprise’s situation, including its scale and maturity.

5. Technological competency: working knowledge of the enterprise’s key technologies. For most organizations, they include IP networks; relational and NoSQL databases; portable languages such as SQL, Java, C#, JavaScript, and Python; IDEs like VS Code; and cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.

5. Hands-on technology delivery skills: the ability to personally build proofs of concept and prototypes that address key issues and demonstrate the feasibility of proposed architectures. In some cases, the ability to supervise developers is sufficient, but hands-on-skills are always valuable for building credibility and delivering rapidly.

6. Agile competency and orientation: conducting product development efforts that produce compelling results at intervals of a few weeks and continuously embrace new discoveries and requirements.

7. Working knowledge of relevant frameworks and leading practices. This includes foundational, industry-specific, discipline-specific, and organizational ontologies, reference models/architectures, methodologies, and systems of notation, as well as COBIT, GRC, and PPM approaches.

More EA and Solutions Architecture essential knowledge areas include enterprise architecture standards like the TOGAF framework and the ArchiMate language; more specialized languages like UML and BPMN; software architectures such as microservices and messaging; and data architectures such as streaming, pipelines, vaults, warehouses, and marts.

In addition, knowledge of Systems Engineering and its associated Model-Based Systems Engineering approach is valuable, include the use of SysML, DODAF, and UAF standards.

8. Mastery of Design Thinking to better incorporate the advanced use of divergent and convergent options when, for example, scoping an initiative or a series of them.

9. Creative presentations of dynamic road mapping for architecture initiatives of all sizes.

10.  Enhanced use of leading-edge Analyses of Alternatives approaches for initiatives of various sizes and complexity over time from multiple perspectives.

11. Working knowledge of a broad range of information worker productivity and collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Jira, and Azure DevOps; BI tools like Power Automate and Tableau; graphical tools like Microsoft Visio and Miro; and generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Designer.

12.  Finally, the drive and curiosity to build and maintain these competencies and the relationships that provide opportunities to use them.

EA Principals realizes that current architectural training courses alone no longer fully prepare enterprise and solutions architects. Therefore, we are developing a new instructor-led curriculum that we will combine with mentoring and peer support. We will keep readers of this publication up to date on this exciting effort.

Authored by Iver Band, EA Principals Senior Instructor and ArchiMate Expert