Learning Soft Skills to Become a Better Solutions Architect

In the previous chapters, you learned how a solutions architect needs to accommodate all stakeholders’ needs. Even if the solutions architect’s role is technical, they need to work across the organization, from senior management to the development team. Soft skills are essential and critical factors to become a successful solutions architect.

Solutions architects should keep updated with current technology trends, keep evolving their knowledge, and always be curious to learn new things. You can become a better solutions architect by applying continuous learning. You will discover methods to learn new technologies in this chapter and how to share and contribute back to the technical community.

Solutions architects need to define and present an overall technical strategy to address business concerns. They need to work across business and technical teams to negotiate the best solution, which requires excellent...

Importance of soft skills in solution architecture

The importance of soft skills in solution architecture cannot be overstated, as these skills are integral to the effectiveness and success of a solutions architect.

Firstly, effective communication is paramount. Solutions architects must simplify complex technical details for non-technical stakeholders, ensuring clarity and alignment between technical and business objectives. This skill is vital in bridging the gap between technical teams and business units, facilitating mutual understanding and collaborative goal setting.

Collaboration and teamwork also play a critical role. Given that solutions architects often work in multidisciplinary teams, the ability to work harmoniously with individuals from diverse backgrounds and expertise is crucial. This collaboration extends to conflict resolution, consensus building, and fostering an environment of shared responsibility and collective success.

Furthermore, problem-solving...

Acquiring pre-sales skills

Pre-sales is a critical phase for complex technology procurement, whereby the customer collects detailed information to make a buying decision. In the customer organization, a solutions architect is involved in the pre-sales cycle to validate technology and infrastructure resources from various vendors. In the vendor organization, the solutions architect needs to respond to customers’ requests for proposals (RFPs) and present a potential solution to acquire new business for an organization. Achieving this requires a specific skill set.

Key skills

Pre-sales requires a unique skill set that combines strong technical knowledge with soft skills, including the following:

• Communication and negotiation skills: Solutions architects need excellent communication skills to engage customers with the correct and latest details. Presenting precise details of the solution and industry relevance helps customers understand how your solution can...

Taking ownership and accountability

Taking ownership and positioning yourself as a leader helps you to win trust with accountability. Ownership doesn’t mean you need to execute things alone; it is more about taking new initiatives and holding on to them for your organization. You can have ideas that can benefit your organization regarding productivity, agility, cost savings, and increasing the customer base. Sometimes, you may need more time or resources to execute your idea, but you should bring it forward as a new initiative and engage others for execution.

Accountability is about taking responsibility to drive the outcome. Ownership and accountability go hand in hand, where you are creating initiative and working on getting the result. People can trust you to execute any job and drive results. Accountability helps you build trust with your customers and team, resulting in a better work environment and goal achievement.

As a solutions architect, taking ownership helps...

Being flexible and adaptable

Adaptability and flexibility go hand in hand, and as a solutions architect, you must be flexible to adapt to new environments, working cultures, and technologies. Adaptability means you are always open to new ideas and to working with appropriate teams.

Teams may adopt a process and technology that is best suited for them. As a solutions architect, you must be flexible in accommodating team requirements during solution design. For example, in a microservices architecture, each service communicates via a standard RESTful API over the HTTP protocol. Teams may write code in a different language or tool, such as Python, Java, Node.js, or C#. The only requirement is that teams expose their APIs securely so that the entire system can build upon utilizing them.

You need different mindsets and perspectives to look into a problem and get a more innovative solution. Encouraging teams to fail fast and innovate helps an organization to be competitive.

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Design thinking

A solutions architect has the primary role of system design, which makes design thinking an essential skill. Design thinking is one of the most successful approaches adopted across industries to solve challenging and unclear problems. Design thinking helps you to look at problems and solutions from a different perspective, which you might have yet to consider in the first instance. Design thinking focuses more on delivering results by providing a solution-based approach to solving a problem. It helps to question the problem, solution, and associated risk to develop the most optimized strategy.

Design thinking helps you redefine problems in a more human-centric way by putting yourself in the place of end users and customers. The following diagram illustrates the primary principles of design thinking:

Figure 17.2: Principles of design thinking

The following points are some design-thinking principles:

• Experiment often: Create a prototype to...

Being a builder by engaging in coding hands-on

A solutions architect is a builder who learns by doing. Building a prototype is worth a thousand pictures. It helps to reduce miscommunication and ideate solutions. Presenting a POC and prototyping are integral parts of the solutions architect’s role.

Prototyping is the pre-solution phase, which helps to deepen your understanding of the application design and user. It helps you to think about and build multiple solution paths. By testing a prototype, you can refine your solution and inspire others, such as teams, customers, and investors, by demoing your vision.

A solutions architect is a technical leader who works closely with the development team. In an empowered agile team of developers, a solutions architect needs to show a piece of code as a POC in addition to a PowerPoint presentation. A solutions architect doesn’t need to be part of the development team but works collaboratively to convey the solution to the...

Becoming better with continuous learning

Solutions architects need to continually absorb new knowledge and enhance their skill sets to help the organization make better decisions. Continuous learning keeps your skill set relevant and builds confidence. It opens up your mind and changes prospects.

Learning can be challenging with a full-time job and a busy family life. Continuous learning is about developing the habit of always learning something new, whereby you have to be motivated and disciplined. You first need to set up learning goals and apply effective time management to achieve them. This often slips through the net when you get busy with regular daily work.

Everyone has their own style of learning. Some people may like formal education; some may read books; others may want to listen to and watch tutorials. You need to find the learning style that is most effective for you and suited to your lifestyle.

For example, you can listen to audiobooks and tutorials when...

Being a mentor to others

Mentoring is about helping others and setting them up for success based on your learning and experience. It is an effective way to develop leaders, through one-to-one mentor/mentee relationships. To be a good mentor, you must establish an informal communication style where the mentee can develop a comfort zone. The mentee can seek advice in multiple areas, such as career development or personal aspects, such as work-life balance. You should do an informal needs assessment and set mutual goals and expectations.

Mentorship is more about listening than talking. Sometimes, people need someone to listen to them and advise as required. You should listen carefully first and understand their point of view.

Help the mentee make their own decisions, making them feel more accomplished. As a good mentor, when advising on someone’s career, you need to be open to advice on the best fit for the mentee, even if it may not necessarily be the best fit for the...

Becoming a technology evangelist and thought leader

Technology evangelism is about being an expert in advocating technology and your product. Some organizations with an extensive product base roll out a separate technology evangelist role. Still, a solutions architect often needs to assume the role of an evangelist as part of their job. As a technology evangelist, you must be aware of current technology trends to understand real-world problems and advocate for your technology to solve business concerns.

Technology evangelism involves participating in an industry conference as a public speaker and promoting your platform. It allows you to become a thought leader and an influencer, which can help the organization increase its platform and product adoption. Public speaking is one of the critical skills required for a solutions architect to interact on various public platforms and present in front of large audiences.

An evangelist also creates and publishes blog posts, whitepapers...

Summary

In this chapter, you learned about the soft skills required for a solutions architect to succeed, and the importance of these. A solutions architect needs pre-sales skills, which help them support the organization’s pre-sales cycle, such as with the RFP.

You learned about the presentation skills required for executive conversations and buy-in and the strategic understanding that a solutions architect should have to define key objectives and results for an organization. To execute at various levels, solutions architects should be able to think big and be flexible and adaptable. You learned details about solutions architects taking ownership and being accountable for their actions.

A solutions architect’s role has the primary responsibility of architecture design. You learned about design thinking, with its principles and phases. You also learned about the importance of continuous learning and different techniques to carry on learning and keep up with market...