The Argument: Better Architecture Everyday
The Argument: Better Architecture Everyday
The Chief Architect Forum: Shaping the Architecture Profession (with Grant Ecker)
Welcome to the Argument. This is Paul Price, CEO and founder of ISA, co-founder of the Chief Architect Forum. I'm here today with Grant Ecker, my co-founder. Hey Grant, hey, Thanks for joining us. This is kind of a fun podcast for me to do because I get to hang out with somebody that I get to hang out with a lot, but we get to actually talk to the world a little bit about what chief architect means right and what does it mean to be leading this kind of organization. So maybe first, I guess the first thing is just you know, hey, how are you? Maybe tell us a little bit about where you're at right now and what's up with Grant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm doing awesome. I'm kind of finishing up my chapter with Danaher and transitioning a bit, which is always exciting. Also, you never know what's next. You get a little bit of the nerves with change. We all have that. So that's the moment I'm in today and very excited about the future and the potential of the Chief Architect Forum and actually excited to spend a few more cycles in that space as I navigate my own transition. Actually excited to spend a few more cycles in that space as I navigate my own transition so well.
Speaker 1:you know I know you'll always land upwards. You've got an amazing career path as a chief architect, what I guess a lot of people kind of wonder what does that mean, chief architect? I think that's probably one of the things. We have a lot of listeners who are very practitioner based. We are very, you know, isa and the argument have a lot of followers that are software architects, even software architecture thought leaders, like Grady Booch has been an interview candidate, et cetera. So like what do you think is the role? What is this chief architect thing Like? What does it mean to be a chief architect and amongst chief architects in the CAF?
Speaker 2:I absolutely love that question and I think there's a lot of misperceptions out there. The chief architect is the most brilliant person of technology visionary in the company. I think they bring forward the most visionary perspective a company can offer in technology. But they don't do it because they're the smartest person in the room. They do it because they're the chief coach of all of the technical architects and business architects and architects across multiple professions, like product to assemble a view that we think is the common win for the organization.
Speaker 2:I think it's that understanding that the power is with the people who understand their domains and focusing on assembly that gives us our unique strengths and what we get to do is learn from all these amazing people, developing our own breadth and depth across them, subject matter that has the most relevance to an organization and the outcomes they're trying to achieve, which is the second piece, which is really just as important as the first how do we enable business outcomes with technology? And one of these challenges gets into the other role we play as the chief family counselor across the CIO's team. It's a bit of a joke but it's not, because in the absence of a clear and defined technical path, we all sort of find our own way, and that's very much just human nature. So how do we help two leaders that might think they found the answer to the problem in different ways come together on what the right answer for the organization is? The great equalizing effect is actually the voices of their own people coming together and finding what they think is the balanced solution, and they generally go oh well, my own people think that and the other folks in the organization think this is something similar.
Speaker 2:Maybe this makes sense. Can I just put the three or four cents in that I need to make this make sense in my stakeholder community and we can move forward, and that those two things together, I think, are truly special and truly unique to the architecture profession and that when we walk in the room it's different. We're not there representing a domain. We're not there to win for our space at the expense of other areas. We're looking for the true enterprise win, bringing the technical community together to find it and bringing the leadership together to support.
Speaker 1:Now, how do you navigate just the sheer volume and scopes that way, like, how do you go up and down that stack? You know Gregor Hoppe calls it the architect elevator of a popular book these days, and Gregor's an amazing architect and has been. But how do you navigate all those scopes? I mean you deal with multi. You know hundreds of billions of dollar enterprises, right. So how do you jump down into the basement and up into the boardroom, as we've always kind of anecdotally said?
Speaker 2:Fear is the enemy of a cheap architect. If you're afraid, if you're in, afraid is you know you're either mad, you're sad, you're happy or you're afraid. Those are the four choices. Now, there's lots of things in afraid that fit. One is the imposter syndrome, right? The lack of confidence, the worry about what others will think of you, right. All of these kinds of things.
Speaker 2:If you can throw all that garbage out and focus on the other emotions, especially on play and happiness and joy, there's a lot of that in here. So if you can be in that mindset of I'm going to learn something great today and I'm going to be able to bring somebody's voice higher, then all this starts to go away and you really start to focus on who has the most brilliant insight that we should be elevating right now, who has the ideas that are not being heard today, and making sure those voices come together. So when you come into the space maybe you've never touched before, know very little about if you're, instead of coming from fear of oh no, this person is going to think I don't know all the answers, you come from a place of curiosity and playfulness. That's where you can start to have those concerns fade and get an education from the people that are in that space, versus trying to show up as an expert. You aren't, to be honest.
Speaker 1:First of all, that's amazing because I really like the notion that something that A you know there doesn't need to be so much fear, right, that we can approach this in a positive way. We're looking for answers, we're not looking to be right right, it's not always about that and in fact, in many ways, we're looking to make other people right, and I love that. As a second, goal right.
Speaker 1:If you make everybody else a winner, then you don't really have to worry about whether you are or not. The other thing I was kind of curious about is as you deal with these large practices right. So we've seen practices that are five people, you know, at large companies, or 30 people in large companies, all the way up to 500, a thousand people. How do you think about you know, what's going on in architecture these days, so to speak? What's going on in kind of like, what do you see as like our remit? What are we doing different? What are we doing better? And I don't really want to dive into just you know how to do architecture, but really more about what are practices doing for their organizations, for their outcomes, for their boards? You were talking about understanding business and driving technology change through that, and I guess that's what I mean.
Speaker 2:You know, there's a really wonderful metaphor that one of our members posted around skiing and how the different things you focus on in a ski hill, you know where you put your weight, how you're turning into the next corner, all of these things. They're very much relevant to how an architect navigates the ski hill of the business climate they're in, and there's this notion out there that a chief architect is going to come in and tell us all the answers. And I think the thing that's often missed by hiring leaders is we need to know where we're trying to go to help bring the organization forward into that path. So, for example, are we looking for consolidation and application rationalization? Are we looking for driving innovation? Are we looking for business process consolidation and application rationalization? Are we looking for driving innovation? Are we looking for business process consolidation and harmonization? Are we looking to put new disruptive business models in and understanding what capabilities have to be created to support them? Do we need to go after information architecture so that we can support some of these AI strategies with the data grounding needed to make them successful? There's a number of different areas. You can also say the same about security architecture and multiple domains I hadn't covered like product.
Speaker 2:The idea, though, of understanding where we're trying to go as an IT organization in support of a broader business imperative, a broader business ambition, is ultimately how we adapt our engagement.
Speaker 2:We can do any of those things Any of the members of our forum can but the thing that's often lacking is clarity and alignment, and oftentimes that alignment can't exist. In one area of the business, we are consolidating and in another, we're innovating. So having a clear understanding of that and actually having the peers in the CIO's team understand that the person managing the ERP consolidation has completely different challenges than the person running the digitization strategy or the digital transformation and how they're going to have a haves and have nots and how that's actually good, Because when we can pull out some of the costs and running our operations, we can fund the innovation that's ultimately needed to drive the business forward and that actually makes all of us winners together. So, at any scale, this is going to be the challenge of understanding where the business is trying to go in different domains, helping to align the CIOs and their executive teams on the path forward, and bringing their technical communities together with purpose and context to solve the right problem or the right challenge.
Speaker 1:So a lot has been said about. You know that we see a lot of churn in the modern media about these. You know what's going to make these things successful, right? So M&A and agility in the enterprise not agility in the project management sort of delivery sense, but agility at the enterprise level. You know the success or failure of different types of architectural approaches. All that. What do you see as kind of the? What are your business partners most interested in discussing with you? You know, in terms of the leadership of the organization, right? So like what's the big heavy hitters? I mean, we get you know AI and stuff like that, but what do you see as the kind of most relevant conversations that you're having with the business leaders?
Speaker 2:You know it's funny. You would think it would be the next technical gadget or thing coming around the horizon. What they want is a partner they can trust. What they want is someone who will listen. What they want is someone who cares about their problem and cares about them as people, and then the rest of the stuff plugs in.
Speaker 2:Hey, you're smart, what do you think of this? Or what do you think of that? That's when we're really playing that coaching and mentoring and advisory role. But don't miss out we have a really amazing opportunity to learn about them and their space and to me, that's been rewarding on my side is learning a little bit about legal learning, a little bit about privacy and IP law. It's all about what the person is coming in from and what their perspective is.
Speaker 2:But it all really starts from the desire to have a partner, the desire to have someone you can trust, an advisor, and then the what doesn't matter, the what changes on a week-to-week basis. You're talking about taking care of an elderly parent that's having to make a transition, and that's what's important one week and the next week. It's what's the greatest thing in AI and, honestly, if we can focus on the people and not on the problems. We're far more effective as executive leaders in these companies, and it's a far more meaningful way to go through the day as well, because ultimately, it's the people that we end up leaving an impression on, and then are the difference we make. Companies are fantastic, and we all want to make a difference there as well, but to me, our focus is really on how we support one another, be a part of each other's success and with each other in the journey.
Speaker 1:Wow, Well, that is beautifully said. I want to give you a chance to brag about the CAF members, right? What's going on in CAF, right? I know how proud you are of your peers in the CAF and getting a chance to lead there, and I guess I just want to, you know? I mean, okay, it's just a blatant chance to brag about the wonderful people that are joining and what you're seeing and what they're saying to you and you know that kind of thing. What are you seeing in the group and how it's forming, and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:It's a dream come true, frankly, to me, having a chance to be together with my peers, to learn together. It's rising all ship. It's an insanely cool thing. Rather than having to try to, you know, get invited to a dinner from a vendor and ask a question in a great way that our peer next to us might also notice and pick up on so we might connect afterwards. That stuff doesn't work right. So for us to have a place to truly collaborate as leaders of architecture in the Fortune 500, share stories, share learnings and not in a way that puts our companies at risk, but in a way that's like what are the best practices, what are the ways to go about things, what are the ways to think about things and to be able to learn from that perspective.
Speaker 2:I personally benefited from Uli and his leadership at Microsoft in teaching us how AI works not selling a Microsoft product, just how it works, how they're thinking about it. And as I was approached internally at Danaher, I was able to leverage my knowledge from his sharing and how my peers reacted to that conversation in a bit of an AI focus group, and I had, in many cases, better answers than the big four consultant that had come in to actually help us shape our agenda, and it's not because I'm brilliant, it's because I listened in this amazing opportunity that the forum has provided for us and the kindness and sharing of my peers and bringing their perspective forward. So from that, I was tapped into a leadership role in AI and given an amazing opportunity to help shape our approach and able to deliver on that expectation due to this wonderful network of colleagues, and AI is just one example. Take any domain you're not an expert in. With our scale of now 218 members and growing, we can simply put a mural board together of what are the topics we care about and now, as we all put our names next to the things that we're interested in, we have a group of colleagues at peer level that we can discuss that particular space and have resonance.
Speaker 2:I'm not working on governance this year. I'm focused on I don't know something else and okay, that's great. They'll be in that conversation looking at digital twins or whatever's in their priority focus. Or the people who are rolling out a new governance framework and want to know what works and what doesn't. Have a resonant group of peers to come together with and support each other, fun creativity all of these things are honored in the forum and it's in a vendor neutral place, supported by ISA, something that exists for the benefit of all architects, giving us a foundation, the Bittabock, that we can leverage as our communication vehicle, our methodology vehicle to roll out best practices in architecture and evolve that platform and be in a position where today we're at 200, the end of the year we'll be at a position where today we're at 200, the end of the year we'll be at 1,000.
Speaker 1:Perhaps later it'll be just the norm. I'm going to interrupt you there, because you were making a point there, though, that I think, as a chief architect, when I was working at Dell and working in Sears and some of that stuff, one of the things I noticed was that my architecture practice was itself kind of disconnected. My business architects were going one way and following one method my itself kind of disconnected. Right, my business architects were going one way and following one method. My software architects were interested in another.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I loved about, or that I'm loving from the topic areas right, you were talking about the research and the knowledge that's generated out of the CAF. There's something like 20 different topic areas now that they're researching and discussing, right, what are the highlights from that from 2023? And what do you see happening in 2024? And then I want to tie that back into what you said about making that practical in other ways, right, outside of just chief architects, but their actual practices and their teams and things. But what are the hot topics for 2024? Obviously, we know the AI and what Cass done there, but what are some of the other areas that you see them getting excited about?
Speaker 2:I see a lot of people talking about product and I think that's a really interesting space that we should lean into. I think that there's a lot of interest in how product teams and architecture teams engage and I think that there's a really important focus that we can take there in bringing those things to life. And then, as we start to step into some of the other areas, there are still always those building out the basics of their practice, because we do see a lot of ebb and flow in these architecture organizations. So how do I step into the initial work to put business architecture together? Tons of traffic there, right. How do I support innovation? And hats off to Arshad and his approach in terms of how to create an innovation funnel he and I shaped together at Medtronic and I still use today right.
Speaker 2:Data and analytics, as we think about the oil. Right Of that, except it's a renewable resource. You don't run out of it. I think that's a very important space that we need to get right, particularly as that becomes the data grounding for the innovation pipeline of AI. And we have even more than that, though, as well. Right, we have a desire to give back, like looking at open standards and open source that we can create. That betters everybody. Right, looking at sustainable architecture, which is pretty exciting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oliver is a big, big Oliver is a big leader in that space. We're going to have him, I hope. Keynote here in Amsterdam, right In the CAF, in April.
Speaker 2:April 11 through 12, with a dinner on the 10th. And if you're a chief architect listening in, make sure you apply to join us at chiefarchitectforumorg there's an apply to join area. A few others I didn't touch on no-transcript together to discuss these, gain insights and bring that insight back into their organizations. I think it's a wonderful way to elevate the whole profession and we're complementing that this year, now that we have the scale, with local events. We have 11 chapters right now of architects coming together everywhere, from the UK and the Netherlands to the Bay Area, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, minneapolis, chicago, the New York area, the Boston area, just to name a few. And it's so exciting because, as these folks come together and connect for dinners and connect to have basically architecture, what do we call them? Special interest groups, like the AI one that just recently ran with Michael out of Minneapolis, with Steve Peterson and quite a few others. Jim Wilt was involved in that one.
Speaker 2:It's just really cool to watch this coming together and how different folks we're all leaders. I'm leading a group of peers, so what's amazing is it's not me having to pull these communities together. I've got architect leaders that are taking on the community leadership which is Nodden out of Red Hat and each area, each local area, has a leader, like Gita out of California driving the Bay Area community, and those kinds of federated leadership are what allow us to scale. The same is true on topic. Stephen Kaufman is leading us in topics and we're going to have each of these areas appoint their own leader, or the leader from 23 can carry forward and that becomes an opportunity to build your own cap, build your own AI cap, build your own federated architecture cap, and it's really fun to watch how this thing really scales.
Speaker 1:There's some really interesting things that I want to that are going on in the marketplace in general, right. So I see people ask me a lot, what's going on in our? You know, like our architect is architects are going to be popular, is it going away again? Like I still hear stuff like this, um, and I I think you said some stuff that was very interesting at ISA that we're seeing is the ability to actually move the practice now of architecture, right, the practices, what have traditionally been separate camps of you know, oh, the software, these guys and the agile folks and the business folks and the solution folks and the information folks and you know that kind of thing. And now we're starting to see kind of the ability to connect these, the work of these groups, together through the Bitterbock, through other bodies of knowledge. We're open to kind of all the bodies of knowledge in the world and we want to use any tool that's valuable to architects, as you're doing these research groups.
Speaker 1:What do you see as the kind of remit of the CAF? And I kind of I'm going to I think we should probably end there because you know we could, you and I could talk for another two hours. I know because we do. But the point being that I'd like to leave with what's your vision for CAF? What's the like? Leading the profession is a big deal right, and I love your vision of a humble leader, of a humble servant or a servant leader kind of thing, right, as somebody called it. Kind of you know, you build your people and you build your stakeholders and then you succeed. Not the traditional, you know, tell you what to do. What do you see as the CAF's remit? The Chief Architect Forum? Where is it going, so to speak?
Speaker 2:Well, it's really about activating the art and science of the profession of architecture right, and I think we have four key imperatives that haven't changed from the beginning, which is building our network and expanding our reach to get to know one another, learning from each other, starting to focus on developing our talent, and then, as we grow, we gain the ability and the right to advance our profession.
Speaker 2:And we start there by deploying artifacts, by sharing knowledge, by publishing articles.
Speaker 2:But over time we can actually professionalize this field to a degree that it's more clear what a chief architect is and isn't and that there becomes a bit of a standard around what is expected of a chief architect and where they play, so that it's more understood.
Speaker 2:Because today I find we face an uphill battle as chief architects, defining our role and helping to assert where we can play and how we can support a company in achieving its direction, its mandate, its imperatives. So I look at as we scale up, we ultimately all benefit from each other's learning and sharing and ultimately then turn that around externally and support the development of talent towards that chief architect role, bringing in more women into the profession Today we only have 10 to 15% representation and supporting the folks that are underrepresented, and while also building a collective voice that we can bring into organizations, into governments, into all the different aspects where architects play today, including the public sector, and start to unify that and build a little bit more consistency that allows this group of professionals to truly add the organizational impact we're here to provide and grow each other on the way.
Speaker 1:Wow, well, okay, so I don't think I could say it any better. I guess some news from the ISA and the CAF. The let's see Chief Architect Forum Summit is April 11th and 12th. For any of our Chief Architect members, you can apply for membership. Only members can attend. Applying for membership is chiefarchitectforumorg, and a board of members reviews each and looks at their qualifications. There is an emerging CAF. For smaller practices and emerging chief architects, there is the large corporate practice CAF, which is basically chief architects from the most complicated, most intense practices around the world today. The Emerging CAF will be getting going in the next couple of months with its first couple of events. That's a pretty exciting launch. Anything you want to say about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's super exciting. I think this group will outnumber us quickly and that's a place that we can also live our purpose of developing talent. If the folks that are in smaller practices or newer to Chief Architect roles, there's a wonderful connection we can create there. So that's gonna start in May. We have Bryce and Zach is our leaders for that forum that are gonna co-facilitate that agenda and partner with its members, and about 70 people have been accepted already. As this has been a vision of ours for a while Now, we're ready to activate that vision and actually take it forward. So it'll be May and then every month there, every three months thereafter, we'll have an emerging Chief Architect Forum event and it will also start to grow into its practices of deploying governance or building out an AI strategy.
Speaker 2:And why the separation? I think is another thing to call out. It's because the problems are different. We want to create a form of peer. It's super important If one group is talking about $100 million cloud migrations and the other group is just simply saying how do I even get attention from Microsoft? There isn't a lot of learning, so we have to create resonance. So it's about having those folks in a similar context in a similar room chatting about how they're moving the ball forward with a cross-communication across these two to help us learn from each other in different contexts.
Speaker 1:The Chief Architect Forum podcast, which has recorded its first episodes, will be launching in the next couple of weeks. Grant, you and Brian will be the hosts and interviewing chief architect members and other thought leaders.
Speaker 2:It's outstanding. It's so fun. It's another one of those chances to learn and to get a view into others' view of the practice, so I hope you join us in that series. It'll be in all the popular formats, including a video version so you can actually watch us. And something I'm truly excited about Brian, chief architect at Chick-fil-A, is just a natural at this space, so I hope you'll enjoy watching him in action.
Speaker 1:How many Chick-fil-A jokes do you think he gets? Do you think he gets the hey, did you bring lunch?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm sure he did send me lunch, so in all fairness, he delivers on that one.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I wish I didn't. Amsterdam does not have a. I don't know if we have a Chick-fil-A. I need to talk to him about that, because I could use a little. Well, thanks for today, grant. This was awesome and I look forward to many more of these and more of these, and I'm I can't wait to see the interviews myself. I don't I? I, since I'm not there for the podcast, I get to be an attendee, which is quite nice in my, uh, in my, you know, in the, in my world. So, um, anything else you want to leave us with?
Speaker 2:uh, just find us online chiefarchitectforumorg. We also have a really fantastic growing social platform. You can find the Chief Architect Forum on LinkedIn. We're approaching 4,000 followers, which, honestly, is amazing. We only had 800 this time last year and it's really a place not just to hear any one of our voices, but all of our voices. That page just reposts what Chief Architects are saying and doing. If you want to get a sense of what we're discussing, what we're debating, join in and follow us, and then join the conversation by commenting, and usually you'll get a chief architect or two responding to you. So definitely take that opportunity and engage with us.
Speaker 1:Awesome Thanks, Grant, and we will be posting this and numerous other arguments on women in architecture, sustainability, modern software architecture and any number of other information in cloud architecture patterns. Just a host of arguments coming out this year. Really excited to get this kicked off again. Thank you again, Grant, for today and everybody enjoy your weekend Absolutely. Thank you, Paul.