If you ask just about any IT Director, Manager, or even PM, they’ll tell you that Architects are amongst the toughest resources to find.  I’ve experienced this so often either when helping clients build their teams, or when I’ve tried to build them myself.

Architect Boot Camp training was designed to help organizations train their own staff, or to help those in IT who have an affinity towards high end design & IT Strategy, but want to hone or learn Architect Methods, Process and Approach.  The objective is to deliver the theory, while using real life scenarios and then practice through case studies and exercises.

This fall our IT Architect Boot Camp workshop is now full, and we have but one spot left in our Solution Architect Workshop.  We had to move to larger space to deliver the workshops, and I’m sure with the great mix of staff and experience, they’ll be a good experience for all attendees.

If we can’t find architects, we’ve got to grow our own.  We need to optimize our IT dollars, and now more than ever we need to make sure we’re building and designing the right things.  Just ask John Zachman - he’ll tell you that Architecture is the ONLY way we can improve our success rate.  Only three days to go until the start of this first public offering this fall, so this blog entry will have to be short.

By the beginning of November, there will be several more architects ready to provide value to their organizations.  We must applaud organizations who believe that investments in their people are good ones, and won’t be impacted by rough economic times.

Happy Architecting

Hello,

Long time no type -I’ve been really busy writing content for my latest courses and this came up during research. Each month I play a game - search Google for the keywords “Information Architecture” and see how many bogus links you find before you get to the real stuff. Today I only got to this Maskery Tom Foolery (sorry - this link is gone - guess they were a little embarassed at all of the attention) before I had to stop and write something.

The sad thing is that I don’t know the answer to my question - how many pages does it take before one searching for information architecture can get to the real stuff? Last month, it took 19 pages of Google links before I found something that even resembled information architecture.

Why do I call the fluff not so real? There are so many folks eager to super-size IT, IT Roles and borrow or steal the work architecture to make their products look a little more saleable, and specifically those working in pure web site development and content management are the villains here.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again - Information Architecture INCLUDES content management and web page/site structure design. It is not Information Architecture. IA is all that surrounds the information domain within the system or enterprise architecture. It includes servers and software that house the databases, their structures and operational systems. It includes the many types of data and database models, as well as the repositories, scripts and dictionaries used to describe the data and content stored. It CAN include content management software and the infrastructure required to run it.

This page I’ve referred to above states the following: Below is a schematic of an information architecture

NO - this is not a schematic of an information architecture. It is purely a website navigational map, or as VISIO terms it, a WEB SITE MAP. It is not the architecture - do you see any diagrammatical objects that depict where the information is to be stored, how it is to be stored, and in which technical manner? Do you see any models of the data, or conceptual intent? Do you see any relationships between the data.

Sadly enough, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of companies slogging this marketing type with their product. Super-Size is a McDonalds term, and I’m using it here to refer to the act of making something seem large just to sell more, without much more than added calories. If you want to see more of what this stuff is really made of, see my Information Architecture page.

What came first – the solution or the data?

I’ve spent years in IT and no matter what I do, it keeps coming down to the data. As an Enterprise Architect, selecting a portal for a large financial company was an exercise to plan for technology that would support data in many areas.

As the years go by, Data Architects have become responsible for Web Site Content. Sadly, there are many folks out there on the Web who actually think this is Information Architect – yikes. (see my related article at Architect Boot Camp in the Information Architecture Section It is so much more than just content, although the Data Architect’s job has become so big when they have to figure out how this stuff is going to be stored and organized as well as designing custom databases for inhouse applications.

So when you are called upon to create a Solution Architecture – where do you start? The requirements is usually the first place, but often the requirements come out in the form of Data. Someone says “we have this sales information and we need to make it viewable and include the ability to create custom reports for our marketing managers.” So what do you do first? Do you create a data model? Do you pick technology to run it on? Do you choose the application technology you will use to create it?

Architecture is both a means of doing an inventory, linking and creating new stuff. The inventory in this case includes finding out if this data all lives in a database you can access directly, or whether or not you need to create a new one. It also includes an inventory check of the custom development and data warehousing technologies you have, as well as the interface technologies you have to bring them to the users.

What about security? Do you have that in place to present this information to the marketing team over the net in distant places? Or do you need to protect this stuff so Walmart can’t get it (just kidding – they are the favorite commercial villain, right next to Microsoft!).

How about resources – do you have anyone in your company who has done this before? Can you borrow someone who’s done it, or better yet, some application and resource who have done it and simply tweak it to get new data?

The longer you’ve been around as an IT Architect, the better you’ll get at recognizing patterns, inventorying them and picking them back up and dusting them off for a new solution. Ain’t life great? The best employees might also be the ones who try to do as little new work as possible!