Certification - November 2008 - (Page 61)

JOB ROLES continued from page 57 Society of Manufacturing Engineers, he also is a certified private pilot and rescue diver. The role of technical architect also requires tremendous soft skills, as much of the work involves collaboration, sharing ideas and teaching concepts. A typical day for Wisnosky demonstrates that. “There are a lot of coordination meetings; there are a lot of senior executive advisory boards that I participate in,” he said. “I sit on those boards to make sure the architecture is being used properly. Today, we had the Office of the Director of National Intelligence come in, and they wanted to know how we built this architecture.” For this reason, it’s imperative for an IT professional who is aspiring to the role of technical architect to hone his or her people skills. “[It’s important to] bring people together; often [people] who don’t see eye-to-eye technically or maybe they don’t like each other. We all have to agree on what our path forward is going to be and then stick with it until it’s over — until the last moment,” Wisnosky said. “Some big companies — they have chief information officer[s] whom they pay $10 million a year,” he continued. “That’s not for [their] technical skills, I’m sure! That’s for [their] skills of the kind I’m talking about: being able to bring people together, being able to come up with a plan and have the people in [the] organization be willing to follow it.” In his current role, Wisnosky also spends a great deal of time researching new ways to implement architectures. “When they asked me to stay, to become a government person, my condition was that we would be able to implement this architecture,” he said. “So I spent some time studying what was going on in the field, what was possible, looking at companies that are extremely successful — agile companies like Google. How do they do that? What’s their infrastructure based on?” Then Wisnosky incorporated what he learned into his plans for new blueprints. Ironically, the economy’s impact on companies could spell good news for those interested in becoming technical architects. That’s because industries expe- A technical architect’s typical duties include defining and developing a company’s technical architecture; ensuring all components of the architecture are properly implemented; coaching the technical team; and resolving technical issues. riencing consolidation likely are in the market for new technologies that can handle multiple elements. “These are blueprints for how organizations are supposed to work, so there’s more and more need for that,” Wisnosky said. “Every company of note is doing an enterprise architecture for their own operations. There’s a need for architects. There’s a need for people who can, in a technical sense, [figure out] how these blueprints should be developed and how they should be maintained.” 8 – Agatha Gilmore, agilmore@certmag.com November 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 61 http://www.dni.gov/

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Certification - November 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Tech Careers Dear Techie Virtual Village Data Stream Academic Connection Troubleshooting What We Like Look Ahead The Gender Gap: IT Lacks a Woman’s Touch IT for Free: Volunteering Today Interface Technical Architect: Learning, Growing, Innovating Inside Certification Endtag Ad Index

Certification - November 2008

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