Solution Architect is a very lucrative role, it comes with lot of experience and exposure to different applications, technologies, and roles.
Best Solution Architects are the one who outgrow their previous roles, some attain it early and some take time.
Experience and exposure are very important part of the journey which you cannot bypass. But you can plan your way in more efficient way to attain this role early. Here are the top ten tips to explore –
- Increase experience density – Idea is to gather as much experience as possible in given amount of time, do not waste time, continuously work on your efficiency and speed. Streamline processes so that you can spend more time on problem solving. Three extra hour a week can result in around 162 hours (a month) of extra experience over the year.
- Help others – There are two ways to gain experience, one by doing assigned work, second by doing unassigned work. Usually, people need help when they are stuck somewhere, that is an opportunity for you to work together. More problem solving brings more experience.
- Get help – In order to speed-up your rate of experience, you cannot linger on one problem for long. Spend enough time, but once exhausted all options then involve other experts and learn how they solve the problem, what ideas they have and how they reached to the solution.
- Understand the context – To develop code on a given requirement is not enough, you should understand why it is required, who is going to use, how business will benefit out of it, how it will integrate with other apps or other modules.
- Understand the business – Domain knowledge is as important as technical; you can only discuss or understand the problem statement as good as you know the domain.
- Learn peripheral technologies – As you grow in your role you start seeing bigger picture, and the bigger the picture is one technology is often not sufficient to fill in. Keep learning supporting technologies. learn tools which can help you to increase your productivity, spend some time on office applications like Power Point, Word, and Excel. Learn DB, UI/UX, testing etc.
- Get involved from presales to delivery – Understand the whole process, learn what works best for your client and with your different teams. Learn what are all challenges team faces with you solution design.
- Learn to let go – Sometime we are attached to the tools and technologies over the year. But solutioning is all about what works best with client, not what works best for you. Let go your bias and make decisions rationally.
- Work on soft skills – Often people from technical background lack on soft skills. Lean effective ways to pass your idea or understanding. Learn email writing, learn to write MoM, learn to write technical / function document / test cases. Take some online classes on effective communication.
- Get feedback – We often think that our approach is the best approach, but keep that ego aside and accept feedback open heartedly.
