Lead Architect: Clarity of Technical Roles (Or Lack of It)

The Lead Architect in this company is a rather new role. The person who is playing the role had made valuable contributions in the past in some of the products. He is very good in technology and also has deep understanding of the products. He is well networked with technical community. In the past he has mentored senior members on software architecture best practices. Hence the role was created for him.

The role

• Review the architecture and design across organization
• Mentor others to be architects

Specialist or a Tech Manager?

However the Lead Architect is still a worried a man. He is not familiar with new things like cloud. Also in video area, the technology advancements were too rapid. The specific groups such as video Editor, tools and cloud have not been keeping him in loop. He is confused about expectations on him. On one hand he wanted to remain specialist. On the other, he had the desire to be in demand from across the organization. For this, he needs to transition himself into tech manager, not just a specialist. He has to be comfortable in NOT knowing all the granular information in some of the areas. He has to rely on some one for details is just not bearable for him.

Hopefully he will make the transition soon.

Technical Marketing Responsibility

Noticing his concern about the job of lead architect, the organization has given new dimension to his role – technical marketing and pre-sales support.

As the business has expanded, the need for support from technical teams was increasing.

Winning enterprise customers required detailed RFP responses. The technical marketing and pre-sales as a function did not mature in the past. In the marketplace, the vendors who made the best technical impact won the deals most of the times. Having technical depth in custom solutions was getting critical.

Adding the Lead Architect to pre-sales function was a win-win.

What is your opinion about technical roles ? Any issues? How did you solve these?