Architect or Diplomat?
January 13, 2011
I was approached by a colleague after a recent architecture design meeting who remarked, “Wow, you are quite the diplomat!”, which made me stop and think. This is a common refrain we hear at client sites. While we believe our technical knowledge and experience enable us to bring significant value to clients, we rely just as heavily, if not more, on our diplomacy to broker architecture designs to conclusion. Creating a great design is just a piece of the architect’s puzzle. This led to some ruminations on an Enterprise Architect’s “soft skills” that are not directly related to core technology capabilities and some thoughts regarding architecture diplomacy.