Training IT Architects:
Special Considerations

Any training architects receive, to suppport them in developing business capabilities and — especially — personal ones, requires a program that is customised specifically for the architects. This is for three reasons:


"A culture is a set of basic tacit assumptions about how the world is and ought to be that a group of people share and that determines their perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and, to some degree, their overt behaviour"1.
Each culture has its own mental models, ways of thinking, assumptions and language.


IT Architects are part of an organisation's engineering culture2. They speak ‘engineering’ language, see the world from an engineering mind-set and integrate new concepts into an engineering way of thinking in an engineer's way.
OK, that is a lot of ‘engineering’ :), but the point is: for our brain to make the connections between new concepts and our own mental maps those new concepts have to be described in a way that can fit into or relate to those maps.

In other words: for engineers, personal capabilities will have to be described in engineering language and trained in a way that is congruent with engineers' ways of thinking.


One of the essential conditions for learning is trust. We will only voluntarily learn from a source we consider trustworthy. When we, as adults, accept someone into a position of teacher, guide, mentor or coach, we entrust that person with a certain level of authority over us. We tend to do that only if we deem that person more knowledgeable than ourselves (possibly in a specific field of expertise), believe that person understands — at least to a degree — "where we come from" and trust the integrity of their intentions towards us.
If we feel not understood, we will not lend the level of trust necessary to truly accept guidance.


Typical to ‘engineers’ is a sense of being misunderstood by non-engineers. That means — almost by definition — that IT Architects will only truly accept guidance from someone with a clearly established IT savvy.
It is known, for example, that IT staff tend to measure their respect for their leaders (those they entrust with authority) by their demonstrated technical and professional knowledge, much more than by seniority, position or any other criteria.

This means that the preferred teacher, guide or coach for IT Architects will have both demonstrated IT authority and a clear interest in supporting the architects in becoming better at what they do.


Good IT Architects are recognised to have a wide range of capabilities, some of which even seem contradictory. Apparently, having this variety of capabilities developed makes them better architects.
The purpose of intentionally developing any of these capabilities, in that case, will ultimately be to become better architects and to create better and more relevant architectures.

How all these capabilities will specifically connect into mental maps that will enable the creation of better architectures will be individually unique, depending on the existing mental maps in the brains of each one of these architects.

Training of architects, however, can support the integration by providing a context rich in connections between the trained capabilities and the various phases of architecture3. Which of the connections will "click" and in what way is then up to the individual brains.



1 See: Organisational Culture and Leadership, Second edition, E.H. Schein, (San Fransisco, Jossey-Bass, 1992).
1 See: Organisational Culture and Leadership, Second edition, E.H. Schein, (San Fransisco, Jossey-Bass, 1992).
2 For a detailed description and discussion of the three organisational cultures, see: "Three Cultures of Management: The Key to Organisational Learning", Edgar H. Schein, 1996.
2 For a detailed description and discussion of the three organisational cultures, see: "Three Cultures of Management: The Key to Organisational Learning", Edgar H. Schein, 1996.
3 For a discussion of the capabilities underlying some of these phases, see What is an Architect.
3 For a discussion of the capabilities underlying some of these phases, see What is an Architect.