The architect's role Architect skills What do architects do? An architect is a generalist, both technically and in industry experience. An architect: Understands technology for what it can do and what it could do. Learns through experience as well as education. The Architect’s Skill Profile Personal Skills and Traits Open-minded: Open to new ideas and new approaches. Decision-maker: Willing to take calculated risks. Outgoing: Comfortable working in a group. Thoughtful: Enjoys researching and evaluating available options. Enthusiastic: Likes getting the job done quickly. Data Architecture Understands the current business processes and the information used by those processes. Able to model data flows for the current business processes. Familiar with the current data classes, data repositories, data access paths and entity relationships at the enterprise level. Application Architecture Able to map the current business processes to current applications. Understands the code structure of the current applications. (i.e., Is the presentation layer easily isolated? How is the data stored and accessed?) Has application integration experience. Is a hands-on user of the current application development environment. Technology Architecture Has excellent understanding of the current host environment. Has familiarity with the network communications infrastructure and the system and network management facilities. Is knowledgeable of local area networks, file servers, print servers and workstations including design, integration, and installation.