Reflection: roles and careers

Clearly how "good" one is in a job using the capabilities defined in the job's role(s) determines one's professional and therefore career position, but - and this is key - it can also determine one's profession.

Sometimes, the career profile of a role/job shows a steady, balanced progression, across many capabilities both hard (technical) and soft (people) and it is therefore quite reasonable to enter that profession "early" and look forward to a smooth(!) journey up the ranks.

I think Project Management has this profile - while senior project execs clearly need superbly honed interpersonal skills, they are "more of the same" being demonstrated daily by their team.  And their technical(*) skills show similar profiles.

(*) remember "technical" is not the same as "technological": the ability to create and use a Gantt chart is just as technical as creating and using a component structure view.

Is architecture the same?  I'm not sure... I don't think so.  Why?  Because of one factor: knowledge.  By which I mean the underlying knowledge of the industry (business architecture) and/or application (IS) and infrastructure technologies (IT) upon which an architect applies their technical and people skills.

Sometimes this knowledge has to be bang up to date, but (and this may be debatable!), may be more focused on " first principles", learnt many years ago when technologies were quite different - or so many think!

Either way, there feels like there needs to be a pre-req role to that of the architect - as a technical specialist, such as "Business Analyst" or "Detailed Designer" roles which have a high " knowledge index", enabling the practitioner to cut their teeth on the detail, before switching to a role that takes them away from this "everything of something" world to the world of architecture's "something of everything".

All of which begs three further points:

1. It is likely IT and Business Architects enter the profession later than their peers in other professions such as Project Management and Consulting, probably simultaneoulsy switching from another more technology focused job.
2. There is no fundamental reason why a technical specialist would want to switch to architecture - in fact it's probably the case that many (if not most?) people in technology-centric roles/jobs remain in them for their full careers - why not?
3. It is perfectly possible to enter the architect profession early, so long as provision is made for "knowledge", maybe via assignments into other roles: the key is not to confuse an architectural "technically content rich" role with the softer-skilled consulting profession!