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Architect's Corner!

Architecture Jobs are destroyed as companies are failing to fill up the roles created - part I

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by
Sunil Dutt Jha
, 1st November 2010 at 03:28 AM (1692 Views)
Both organizations and the architects are facing costs overhead in their attempts to locate each other. The mere presence of costly search is NOT sufficient, matching continues to be difficult. There are jobless architects who search for work and there are organizations who are frentically looking out for architects. Of course, small percentage of architects are indifferent between accepting a job and remaining unemployed;-) for the reasons best known to them.
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An increase in search effort by an architect implies a higher individual probability of becoming employed.
However, there are two external factors which are not taken into account by the individual architect. On the one hand, by searching harder, the individual architect worker makes other un- employed architect worse off by reducing their job finding rates. On the other hand, by searching harder, the architect makes employers better off by increasing the rate at which they can fill their vacancies.

Architecture Jobs are destroyed as companies are failing to fill up the roles created. Very often such jobs are being allocated to 'others" who come in disguise of "architects". Sometimes an “Enterprise Architects” role is filled up by an business strategist or sometime by an IT strategist. Both are unfit for an “Enterprise Architect” role. A typical “Technical Architect” role is very often filled by a super, hot-shot programmer who has mugged up the various functional calls and API of the technology libraries to which needs to be invoked. Interestingly, a solution architect role being filled up by “Pre-sales” people. A solution architect could be used for pre-sales, but using a pre-sales (basically a sales and marketing background) person as solution architect? Go figure.

Sample – who are stealing Architect jobs?


Real need

Who is filling this roleWorst scenarios
1.

Enterprise Architect roles

Business Strategist or IT strategists
Program Managers
Technical Managers

2.




Solution ArchitectsPre –sales consultants ( outright sales and marketing background)Senior Programmers
3.

Technical ArchitectsSenior ProgrammersProduct and Tool specialists*

Note: imagine if X-ray machine operator calls himself as a “doctor”, great treatment awaiting ;-)


Is anyone complaining? HRD (Human Resources Department) folks are happy as the roles are filled. Project Manager is happy as the project kicks off. Guess what will happen 3 years down the line...another disaster waiting to happen.


In one side architect job destruction rate is going higher, while at the other hand architect job vacancies are growing. Is it a paradox? or a great market opportunity waiting to be tapped? ;-)
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Updated 2nd November 2010 at 04:56 AM by Sunil Dutt Jha

Categories
Architecture Trends & Surveys , Architecture Roles & Responsibilites

Comments

  1. rev's Avatar
    Hi Sunil,

    I completely agre with your views and concerns. I believe the fundamental problem lies in lack of maturity regarding arhitecture practice - both at an individual as well as enterprise level.

    Especially in the context of ICT industry, Architecture as a practice / discipline is still evolving and yet to find a strong formalization / standardization. As a result, the same space is open for interpretation till date. We are still far away from the established architecture practices in the field of civil /mechanical engineering, where architecture is very much fundamental and means only one thing across the audience. On the contrary, even today in ICT industry, almost everyone have their own interpretation and perception about what architecture is and therefore what it takes to become an architect.

    Another fundamental pain area is that a majority of so called "wise" people in the industry thinks any architecture (including EA) is purely a IT / Technology issue. We are yet to realize (at least in majority of cases) that Architecture is much more than IT / Technology only. The missing part is the business perspective of architecture or the "Why" approach rather than the "What".

    All of the above contributes in enterprise level actions. After all, enterprise is again run by set of individuals and therefore lack of maturity at individual context climbs up toenterprise context. Majority of business owners are yet to realize the real value and need of architecture. Even Enterprise Architecture for them is a technology subset. Therefore, they miss the business context and business mandate towards the key need of efficiently architecting their enterprise to achieve business differentiation by successfully managing complexity and change.

    I guess it's the same lack of maturity due to which hardly many people actually cares. That's why we see people being "labelled" as architects without delivering architecture work. As the context and value of architecture practice is not appreciated properly, enterprises are reluctant on high value architecture investments and still continuing to "label" their trusted senior folks as architects without re-skilling them. I'm not saying that they have to find new people all across to run architecture practice, but the gap between management / technology capability and architecture capability must be addressed through re-skilling.

    Even then, I have a strong believe that we are heading towards a bright opportunity in near future for architecture discipline as well as architects as professionals. This is simply because, architecture is emerging as one of the key for business survival and differentiation. Some enterprises will encash through higher maturity and early adoption,others will eventually learn through the hard way.

    That's my take on the entire scenario.

    Regards,
    Trishit
    Updated 2nd November 2010 at 04:08 AM by rev
  2. Sunil Dutt Jha's Avatar
    Especially in the context of ICT industry, Architecture as a practice / discipline is still evolving and yet to find a strong formalization / standardization. As a result, the same space is open for interpretation till date. We are still far away from the established architecture practices in the field of civil /mechanical engineering, where architecture is very much fundamental and means only one thing across the audience. On the contrary, even today in ICT industry, almost everyone have their own interpretation and perception about what architecture is and therefore what it takes to become an architect.

    Thanks Trishit for your comments. Appreicate that.

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