Financial Services Architect Forum - Part 1

About: This is the first in a series of posts about the spring session of the financial services architect forum, this post focuses on the key note address by the Vice President of Enterprise Architecture at Royal Bank of Canada who talked about the role of architecture in a modern progressive organization.

 

Hello,

 

Microsoft organized the spring session of the Financial Services Architect Forum yesterday where we had architects from all major financial institutions in the central and eastern part of Canada discuss topics of mutual interest; the topics discussed in the CFSAF included:

 

1)      Microsoft’s commitment to Interoperability, Software Architecture, Integration and Enterprise Class Computing – Mark and Randy, Directors at Microsoft Canada

2)      Role of architecture in a modern progressive organization –VP of Enterprise Architecture at RBC

3)      J2EE and .NET interoperability – Chief Technology Officer of JNBridge (http://www.jnbridge.com)

4)      Justifying the value of Services Oriented Architecture – Mohammad Akif, Microsoft

5)      SOA governance, managing J2EE and .NET service – Founding architect of Amberpoint (http://www.amberpoint.com)

6)      Identity Management and Federation panel discussion – Enterprise Architect from Bank of Nova Scotia, System Designer from Manulife Insurance and a partner at ObjectSharp along with a large group of enterprise and solution architects.

7)      Data Center Virtualization panel discussion – Enterprise Architect from Royal Bank of Canada and Bruce Cowper from Microsoft Canada along with a group of infrastructure architects

8)      Windows Vista and Office 12, Jerome Carron from Microsoft

 

I will be detailing interesting highlights from various sessions in series of posts this week; today I wanted to focus on the key note speech by the VP of enterprise architecture at RBC that I and others found extremely interesting.

 

 

Role of architecture in a modern progressive enterprise

 

The session outlined the importance of architecture and architects and discussed the qualities of a good architect. It started by discussing that architecture is just as important as project management, business analysis or quality assurance, just as any serious project cannot and should not be executed without these competencies; it is not wise to try to execute software projects without architecture/architects.

 

The session discussed that contrary to the popular belief, an architect’s role is to simplify the execution of a software projects and facilitate integration. He felt that architects need to be grounded in the real world and need to have a balance between the ‘house of cards’ architecture and the ‘ivory tower'. In terms of the choice between pragmatic and strategic, always choosing strategic is as bad as always choosing pragmatic. A mature architect and organization needs to achieve a healthy balance between statregic and pragmmatics choices and contentious issues can be resolved by clearly writing the goals in a crisp format and comparing the pros and cons in an objective manner. He also felt that architects should not only publish papers and draw pictures but need to stay close to projects and roll up sleeves and join the team in resolving crisis or meeting deadlines.

 

 

There were a number of very interesting quotes during the session, one of my favorites was around the 5 levels of adoption for architecture, he mentioned that good IT organisations are typically at level 4 or 5, the five levels were defined as follows:

 

1. Architecture is an unnecessary evil
2. Architecture is a necessary evil
3. Architect is an advisor
4. Architect is part of the team
5. Architect is an indispensable part of the team

Lastly he mentioned that for successful Enterprise Architecture, organizational structure, culture and processes are all very important, but the key component is People. In this context he described the qualities of a good architect that he had read in another article some of the qualities included

 

1. Enthusiastic
2. Technology agnostic
3. General in technology outlook
4. Well-respected and influential
5. Articulate and persuasive
6. Persistent
7. Good at “helicoptering”
8. Strategic
9. Focused on what is truly best for the organization (limited personal agendas)
10. Knowledgeable of the business
11. Able to facilitate
12. Able to negotiate
13. Focused on the long term
14. Able to lead
15. Able to be taught

He especially stressed the importance of not taking sides between technologies and companies e.g. between J2EE and .NET and stressed that in order for architects to have credibility within the organization they need to be technology agnostic and do what is the best for the organization

 

The Financial Services Architect forum was very well attended and the networking and debates were intense, stay tuned for highlights and pictures of the other sessions

 

 

Best regards,

Mohammad