I can’t imagine guiding large-scale digital transformations without knowledgeable and influential architects. Architects guide solutions, seek standard practices, and target building extendable and reusable platforms and services. Without architects, organizations add risk to their implementations that can delay releasing capabilities, create integration gaps, increase costs, and generate operational complexities.

First, here’s a little background on how I recommend organizing digital transformation initiatives and where architects fit into the leadership model. A product owner and agile team can lead the smaller initiatives, but larger ones often require multiple agile teams working collaboratively. The two primary leaders of large strategic initiatives are the product manager, responsible for the vision and roadmap, and the delivery leader, who guides the solution architecture and delivers releases on time and quality. Successful transformation requires a collaboration between the product manager and delivery leader.

Key lieutenants or partners of the delivery leader are the architects, including enterprise, solution, data, and security architects. Architects help translate problems into solutions while defining non-functional requirements (NFRs). They are key to helping agile, devops, data science, and data governance teams create and support standardized solutions and extendable platforms.

The architect’s role from vision to change management

In Digital Trailblazer, I describe the similarities between architect and product manager roles because both require guiding teams through influence. I wrote, “Architects must prototype with engineers using different technologies and implementation approaches, formulating success criteria that help everyone align on an execution strategy.”

Marko Anastasov, co-founder of Semaphore CI/CD, agrees and says, “Just as a ship needs its compass, Digital Trailblazers lean on architects to navigate the uncharted waters of innovation.”

Let’s unpack the architect’s role and consider three example responsibilities:

• The big picture – Jim Gochee, CEO at Blameless, says architects look at guiding the entire solution, not just the technology. “Digital transformation is complex and touches many systems,” he says. “Architects are your best bet for creating detailed migration plans that are broad, deep, and viable. Also, don’t forget that change is more than technology; it’s also people and process.”
• Domain-specific responsibilities – There are many types of architects, and Heather Sundheim, managing director of solutions engineering at SADA, shares specifics on the data architect’s role. “Data architects are essential in digital transformation, as data is at the heart of many initiatives,” she says. They organize and structure data to ensure it can be effectively used for analytics, AI, and informed decision-making. Data architects prioritize projects by evaluating their impact on data management, security, and compliance.”
• Influencing, teaching, and listening – Architects can’t live in ivory towers and dictate standards. They must get into the weeds to see what teams need to deliver solutions meeting today’s requirements while steering them toward supportable and extendable platforms. “Don’t overlook the importance of training in digital transformation,” says John Peebles, CEO at Administrate. “Training teams house some of the most valuable data about an organization’s potential, but that data is typically extremely siloed. Consider how you will access, standardize, and leverage training data.”

Architects must optimize their time around top-down strategy, bottom-up working with stakeholders and agile teams, and in the weeds researching and prototyping technologies.

Architects’ responsibilities, measures, and activities in digital transformation

In a recent Coffee with Digital Trailblazers, a LinkedIn Audio Event that I host on Fridays at 11am ET, we discussed the significant roles of architects in uplifting digital transformation. I’ve broken them down below into responsibilities, activities, and measures.