By Aaron Tan
Tuesday, April 03 2007 06:58 PM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62002245,00.htm

The International Association of Software Architects (IASA) has introduced a new taxonomy that will underpin its future certification program.

Speaking to ZDNet Asia in a telephone interview, Aaron Tan Dani, IASA chairman for the Asia-Pacific region, said the taxonomy aims to delineate the skills and training needed to become a successful software architect.

According to Tan Dani, the taxonomy will form the foundation of the curriculum for IASA's new certification program, to be introduced a year after the professional body secures sufficient funding from sponsor companies to administer the course.

The taxonomy was jointly conceived though real-world experience of about 100 IT architects worldwide, including independent architects and those from vendor companies such as Microsoft, IBM and Infosys. Microsoft funded the resources required to develop the taxonomy.

Tan Dani said: "The IT architect profession is not well recognized. Most people don't know how they can become an IT architect; some even think that they can become one just by attending a workshop for one week."

According to the IASA official, some of the more popular IT architecture certifications offered in the market today, such as those from Microsoft, IBM and the National University of Singapore's Institute of Systems Science, only cover limited aspects of what it is required to become a holistic IT architect.

He noted that such programs mostly encompass the technical knowledge required of an IT architect, with little emphasis on other areas such as business environments and human dynamics.

"We are 250 years behind the building [and construction] industry," Tan Dani said. "People can take a degree and become a building architect, but in the IT industry, we would take 10 to 15 years to become an IT architect."

The IASA's IT architect taxonomy is available for free as public downloads, spanning more than 600 pages. It is segmented into various categories to include what Tan Dani calls, the "dimensions of an IT architect".

"The first one is leadership," he said. "As an IT architect, you must be a leader, because if you're not, who's going to listen to you and buy your ideas?"

As leaders, IT architects must possess mentorship qualities to ensure their knowledge and expertise are passed down to junior IT professionals, he added. They are also professionals with a wealth of experience, and who understand the interplay between IT and business in order to contribute positively to the company's bottom line.

In addition, he said, an IT architect must have presentation and communication skills to convey his ideas. "If you are good only in your R&D (research and development) room, people will not understand you or implement your ideas," Tan Dani said.

Apart from technical skills required in integrating a plethora of software and hardware technologies, IT architects must also learn to market their ideas to other business units and customers.

Miriam Grace, an enterprise systems architect and a member of the Boeing Technical Excellence fellowship, co-wrote the IASA's taxonomy involving human dynamics, in which she noted that being an IT architect "is all about relationships". "And one relationship that you are responsible for is the one you create between leadership and learning," Grace wrote. "Language barriers, cultural and educational differences, and other dissimilarities often frustrate collaboration and lead to miscommunications and misunderstandings."

"These realities of the modern workplace have important implications on architects as leaders," she added. "As we continue to shift toward more team-based work, we need to develop strategies to effectively address the human dynamics that are operating within our work teams."