Its an interesting question, I felt empathy is the most important value, I feel I need to carry as an solution architect.
Empathy: Empathy towards the stakeholders , it could be Customers, Fellow Developers, Mentors, Coaches, Team members, Junior most person in the team. Need to put ourselves in their shoes and respond.
Its is critical value to carry everyday when you interact to understand the business needs, technology needs, constraints, risks, dependencies while we are building the solution together. Its not solution architect designs and finalizes everything its the input and thoughts coming from various stakeholders forms the solution.
Based on the past experience or unconscious bias might tend to go in different tangents and consensus may not be arrived at all. So working with empathy helps to listen to them in effective way and work on the solution. One need to understand the situation, characteristics and then form the solution which is human centered otherwise it may not yield the right results.
How can I exhibit the act of empathy in your day today life as solution architect:
- Be mindful with situational awareness while communicating with intersection of technology and business.
- Properly write the comment in the code so that others can understand.
- Provide reference to the architecture diagram
- Expand the acronym for the Jargons used
- Understand the variety of stakeholders and provide appropriate Point of views
- Provide sufficient context/background while articulating the solution
- When you look at the existing architecture or AS-IS situation have empathy towards the team which developed it and have empathy to appreciate the good and positive aspects of the same
- Don’t be judgmental about others viewpoints, yet clarify with them on their point of views
Thought these may be specific to solution architect it can be applied across to many roles and walks of life.
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