Dave Hendricksen - 12 Essential Skills for Software Architects

Dave Hendricksen

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hendricksen, Dave, 1964
12 essential skills for software architects / Dave Hendricksen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-321-71729-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Computer software developersVocational guidance. 2. Computer software develop
ersLife skills guides. 3. Computer software developersProfessional relationships.
4. Career development. I. Title. II. Title: Twelve essential skills for software architects.
QA76.25.H47 2011
005.1092dc23
2011027673

Copyright 2012 Pearson Education, Inc.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. To obtain permission to use material from this work, please submit a written request to Pearson Education, Inc., Permissions Department, One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458, or you may fax your request to (201) 236-3290.

ISBN-13: 978-0-321-71729-0
ISBN-10: 0-321-71729-5
Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at RR Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
First printing, September 2011

To my wife, Jennifer, my son, Tim, and my daughter, Katie.

The soft stuff is always harder than the hard stuff.

Roger Enrico, Vice Chairman, Pepsico

As you start reading this book, I hope you are prepared to keep an open mind and are willing to try some new approaches to your daily life.

My name is Dave Hendricksen, and I have the privilege of being a software architect for Thomson Reuters, where the focus of my work is on producing intelligent legal information. This includes everything from data capture to data display of legislative, regulatory, and intellectual property materials on Westlaw.com. I have been married for 22 years to a beautiful lady. We have two great kids, one cat, one dog, and a koi pond.

As a technology person, I have always considered myself to be slightly different from the rest of the normal world. Thinking analytically, focusing on problem solving, building things, and gaming for hours on end all come quite naturally to me. I love to learn new things. For me, going to school has always been great fun; I have a bachelors degree in math and Bible and two masters degrees (one in computer science and one in the management of technology).

I love to work hard and am willing to put in whatever amount of effort is needed to get a project done on time. I love to hear my boss say, Great job, Dave. Of course, my thinking would be this: Do great work, get promoted, and life is awesomeand to a degree, this has been true, at least up to the point where technology enters management. An invisible ether exists here that prevents a large number of talented individuals from moving up the organizational hierarchy and any further in their careers. This magical ether detects a lack of soft skills and quietly prevents these individuals from advancing to the next rungs of the ladder.

My goal for this book is to enable you to learn the essential soft skills that you will need to master as a software architect.

This book assumes that you already have the requisite technical skills to become an architect; as such, it does not focus on these types of skills. Instead, this book focuses on 12 essential soft skills that are critical to the daily activities of being an architect. These are the skills that are typically the most challenging for people with technology backgrounds.

The 12 skills in this book are organized into three groups: relationship skills, personal skills, and business skills. These classifications are based on the notion of relative priority; that is, if you dont have relationship skills, the other two areas dont matter. You are not likely to be promoted to the position of architect or to stay in the role of architect for long if you do not relate to people and various parts of your organization well. Similarly, if you dont have the necessary personal skills, business skills will not be deemed as important. In the end, all of these areas are important, but from a prioritization perspective, if you dont have the foundation skills of relationships mastered first, working on business skills will not have the impact that you are likely looking for.

I view this as a pyramid of skills, which is depicted in .

Figure Pref-1. Essential architect skills

.

Have great day!

Dave

I want to thank the very helpful staff at Addison-Wesleyspecifically, Raina Chrobak, Sheri Cain, Anna Popick, Chris Guzikowski, and freelance copy editor Jill Hobbs. They have been absolutely terrific in helping me work on my first book.

I want to thank my boss at Thomson Reuters, Mick Atton, for all his mentoring and for reviewing this book.

In addition, I want to thank Brad Appleton, Bob Maksimchuk, and Davie Sweis for their insights and detailed reviews of this book. I would also like to say thank you to Colin Renouf for his very detailed review of this book and for the knowledge of psychology that he shared with me. I also want to thank my wife, Jennifer, and my son, Tim, for taking time to review the book.

Finally, I want to thank my family and parents for their patience and support while I completed this book.

Dave Hendricken is a software architect for Thomson Reuters.

Dave enjoys working closely with new product development teams to create innovative legal products for large-scale online platforms such as Westlaw.com.

In his spare time, Dave enjoys mentoring the Eagan High School Robotics team, downhill skiing with his kids, fishing for large-mouth bass, golfing early in the morning, and spending time at the cabin building things like trebuchets, go-carts, and rain barrel watering systems with his kids.