Team and Software: Making an Impact as an Architect

Many believe that software architects primarily structure software and make technical decisions. But in reality, it’s about much more: your ideas and decisions must be implemented by the team and aligned with all stakeholders. Moreover, the organization itself has a significant influence on the architecture.
That’s why it’s so important for architects to be effective - both within the organization and in the architecture itself. This talk demonstrates how to achieve that in practice, drawing on years of experience as an architect and architecture consultant.

Transcript

1. Teams and Software: Making an Impact as an Architect Eberhard Wolff Head of Architecture https://swaglab.rocks/ https://ewolff.com/
2. Hard Skills • Software architecture is about software. • Technical skills should be essential.
3. Architecture IMHO Quality characteristics Technologies Won’t solve user friendliness Structure Maintainability Performance, maintainability, user friendliness, security …
4. Software Architecture: Hard Skills • Software architects do need hard skills • Common knowledge • So why talk about it in details? • And: How are the skills useful if nobody listens to you? • You can hire, read, or learn hard skills quite easily.
5. Coding?
6. Let’s implement part of the system! There is just so much code you can write! But I stay in touch with the code and the system! Maybe – but will you see all of the system?
8. “I must stay away from fighting the fire myself. …even though it is fun and I can do it.“ “I must lead and coordinate.“ “You could do it because you don’t know what fire fighting is about..“
9. What is the Most Important Skill in IT?
10. What is the Most Important Skill in IT? • We asked people at a technical conference. • Just an experiment • We did not really think about possible answers. • By far the most common answer: communication, soft skill …
11. https://software-architektur.tv/2024/08/16/episode228.html
12. What is the Main Challenge in Software Architecture? • Survey through social media What is the biggest challenge in #SoftwareArchitecture in your opinion?
13. Main Challenge in Software Architecture? • Communication • Organization and architecture • Evolution of systems
14. https://software-architektur.tv/2025/06/27/folge269.html
15. What does that mean? • Most important skill in IT: Communication • Main challenge in software architecture: Soft skills
16. Software architecture is a people business! And you know it! So why code?
17. Software Architecture Project Developers Stakeholder Management User Operations UX, QA, …
18. Software Architecture Project Developers Stakeholder Management User Operations UX, QA, … How can I make an impact?
19. Making an Impact: Convince! • Enforce the architecture you came up with. • I.e. convince others • Developers but also managers • Is this helpful? • Can you really make other do your bidding? • You can only really influence yourself.
20. Making an Impact: Communicate! • Try to understand the different perspectives! • Provide feedback about your perspective! • Learn • …and make your knowledge usable
21. Management Management Technical People
22. Would you like to be able to override management decisions?
23. Override Management? • Common exercise in my trainings • Result: Yes, we want to be able to override. • After discussion: Technical people just want to have a conversation. • I am happy that management does management things. • You can always escalate. • So: communication is the key.
24. I am intentionally not a managing director. ...and I am very happy with that decision.
25. Management Management Operations
26. Management Management Operations What are some ways to not do what you are told?
27. Communicate! • Architects sometimes accept management decision as final. • As a consultant, I am paid to provide feedback on them. • Why would architects not be able to do that, too? • So: Provide feedback! Management
28. Fearless Change • Strategies to introduce ideas to organizations. • Token: To keep a new idea alive in a person’s memory, hand out tokens that can be identified with the topic being introduced. • Local Sponsor Ask for Help from first-line management. When your boss supports the tasks you are doing to introduce the new idea, you can be even more effective.
29. https://software-architektur.tv/2024/09/27/episode233.html
30. https://software-architektur.tv/2021/02/11/folge49.html
31. Communicate! • Management: budget, deadline, politics • Translate your perspective into this world! • If your decision does not make sense in the management world – does it make any sense? • Helps to focus and set priorities Management
32. Communicate! • Developers: experts for code and details • Ask for feedback and problems! • Architects are not super developers. • Architects work on a different level. • Goal: Support developers Developers
33. Communication
34. Probably There is a Reason • Get a clearer picture. • Find contradictions in a perspective and make them explicit! • Find contradictions to others and make them explicit!
35. Probably There is a Reason • What people do or say sometimes seems stupid or mysterious. • But in their mind, it makes sense. • If you figure out something is “stupid“ in five minutes, ...it is not hard to figure out. • Hard: Why is still implemented / said?
36. Probably There is a Reason • Words make sense only in the context of values and motivations. • Try to understand their point of view! • Otherwise: How will you work with them? • Try to walk in their shoes! • You might call that empathy.
37. “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-musk-said-fundamental-130000768.html https://taz.de/Elon-Musks-Hitlergruss/!6060000/
38. “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-musk-said-fundamental-130000768.html https://taz.de/Elon-Musks-Hitlergruss/!6060000/ You can be very “successful” with a very different approach. 😬
39. “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.” Hannah Arendt German and American historian and philosopher https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hannah_Arendt_1955_(cropped).jpg
40. Quality of Decision vs Autonomy •Decisions have two levels: Quality of the decision How the decision is made impacts autonomy •E.g. let the team decide or push a decision through?
41. Quality of Decision vs Autonomy JavaScript Framework: Architect pushes decision through Quality of the Architecture Autonomy Architect probably thinks his / her decision is great
42. Quality of Decision vs Autonomy JavaScript Framework: Architect pushes decision through Quality of the Architecture Autonomy Architect probably thinks his / her decision is great …but team might have some expertise. Even if it is great – is it worth it?
43. Quality of Decision vs Autonomy JavaScript Framework: Let the team decide Quality of the Decision Autonomy
44. Decisions •Moderate, listen, convince •Don’t enforce •Make your expertise usable •General rule for managing self-organization Architects Team
45. Decisions / Moderation • Meeting • One person on the whiteboard. • Meeting will be dominated by that person. • Work will be sequential not parallel. • Discussion in pairs? • Post its? • …
46. https://software-architektur.tv/2024/10/04/episode234.html
47. Socio-technical Architecture Reviews • Architecture reviews often focus on the software. • Software is a product of a social system i.e. a team. • Let’s focus on the team! • Result: Working teams instead of a slide deck.
48. https://software-architektur.tv/2026/02/06/folge301.html https://swaglab.rocks/star-review/
49. Other Industries
50. https://software-architektur.tv/2023/10/27/folge187.html
51. Auftragstaktik (Mission-type Tactics) • Unit gets a mission e.g. hold the bridge + a reason e.g. so we can retreat • Should reach the goal in whatever way they see fit. • Commander’s intent: If the retreat is done, no need to hold the bridge any more.
52. https://software-architektur.tv/2022/11/04/folge141.html
53. Tenerife Aircraft Crash • Deadliest aircraft disaster • Two Jumbo Boeing 747 collided on the ground • Extremely senior crews • Including a KLM “rockstar” • Crashes have many causes! • Flight engineer: “Where is the other 747?“ https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en
54. Is there a way to systematically improve collaboration?
55. Crew Resource Management & Architecture • Use the expertise of the full crew! • The only thing the captains decides by themselves is to abort a take-off.
56. Crew Resource Management • Use every resource to the fullest! • Resources: humans and technical tools. • This is about making air travel even safer. • This is not about making everyone happy. • Don’t confuse “happy” and “successful”.
57. https://software-architektur.tv/2023/08/11/folge178.html
58. Can Pushing Through be Successful? •Other industries emphasize collaboration. •In particular, if the stakes are higher than in many software project. Architects Team
59. Is this Culture? • No • Crew Resource Management and Auftragstaktik are learned and being taught. • At scale • In very practical exercises
60. Interaction Retreat • Let’s spend a day to practice interactions! • With Martin Heider and Eberhard Wolff • We already did it for a customer with great feedback! • Interested? http://ewolff.com/interaktionsretreat.html
61. Failure
62. Failure • Talks often make things seem simple. • We all fail all the time in communication. • Communication is never perfect. • Sometimes things are just clear in retrospect. • We are driven by not just by logic but also emotions.
63. Conclusion
64. Conclusion •Being an architect seems to be about hard skills. •But it is a lot about soft skills …and you know it. • This can be taught and learned. • We all fail all the time.
65. DRINK A VIRTUAL COFFEE WITH ME! Eberhard Wolff Head of Architecture https://swaglab.rocks/ https://ewolff.com/ https://swaglab.rocks/virtueller-kaffee/eberhard/
66. Slides + more Powered by Amazon Lambda Email address logged for 14 days, wrong addressed emails handled manually Scan QR code or send email to voxxedzurich2026@ewolff.com