04:Architect: What’s in a title?

Sun, 08 Aug 2010

It’s Sunday night and I still have not published my weekly blog post which I normally do every Friday night. I have no excuse other than what I will post later on my projects blog ;-) Anyway, without further ado:

Until about 18 months ago, I had not heard of a role known as Information Architect. I was appointed as a Technical Architect at my new company along with an Information Architect who started a month before me. When you do any research into Architecture, you find all kinds of titles. Business, Information, Technical, Solution, Enterprise, System, Software... all with the word Architect behind them...

This is the same for the entire IT industry. Everyone has at least some kind of notion of what they want an individual to do, and then someone in HR (or worse, a manager) comes up with a title that they then start recruiting for.

In Architecture however, IASA Sweden tackled the problem and came up with a beautifully simple and implementable solution. They published an Article titled “A study of Architecture roles by IASA Sweden” in the Microsoft Architecture Journal Issue 15 (pdf) (page 22) a while ago. I’ve been using this as a guideline for my role.

I thought this has been very useful to me and therefore I’m sure you may find it useful too.

Until next week, or until I have another epiphany, or until I feel authoritive* or creative again, which ever come first.

* I know this is not a real word, but those that know me, would know I specialise in coming up with new words. UrbanDictionary ;-)