A common issue that I see in many organisations is one of resourcing and quality of resource. There would appear to be significantly more demand in the UK market for Architects of good quality, than there are actual Architects out in the 'resource pool'.

Now there's likely a few factors involved in this;

• 1. Sometimes the criteria for actually identifying what an Architect IS can be a bit vague, and is open to considerable amounts of interpretation, this is across both organisations and Architecture industry bodies.

• 2. The path to becoming an Architect is typically quite a long one, with an individual having to traverse many different disciplines, gaining experience in each, and practicing a set of 'over the top' skills as well, such as stakeholder management, to be able to operate in quite a demanding space within an organisation. This is generally not a fast process, taking time and effort, becoming familiar with a lot of different challenges, being tested in them, and becoming a pretty resilient character.

So if you've got aspirations to get into Architecture, how do you go about it? What's considered the 'traditional' path? Is there a fast track? All things that I'll cover in a series of blog posts. Its going to be a pretty big picture conversation, so

I'll link each one off from here, taking an Architectural approach if you will, building up each part of the story so that you can see how it comes together. Note as well that this isn't a guide to TOGAF. There are much better places to learn that than here, I'm simply applying some of the core elements of the framework to show how it can help you think about being an Architect. TOGAF may appear somewhat 'High brow framework' sometimes, but it has been developed over the years with a common sense approach to how to actually perform Architecture tasks, as such it can give us some really good insight into how to think like an Architect.

My initial list of topics is below, but as is the case with any Architect, I'm likely to change it as I go along.

• 1. The standard approach to becoming an Architect
• 2. Is there a fast track approach to becoming an Architect?
• 3. What do you need to know, to become an Architect?
  • a. Architecture roles
  • b. Architecture domains
  • c. Facing into a Business as an Architect
  • d. Common 'approaches' (get out of jail free cards) that Architects use
• 4. What should you be able to knock out the park, day after day as an Architect?
  • a. Options papers
  • b. Transitional state views (AS-IS in comparison to the TO-BE) typically showing Tactical decisions and whether they align to an overall Strategy
  • c. Governance submissions and responses
  • d. Conceptual, Logical & Physical architectural views
  • e. Principles and Patterns

Think I'm well off the mark in any of these articles? Feel free to provide a counter balanced view, after all, that's a key aspect