Your personal vision: Where do you want to be in 2 to 5 years? What role would you like to be in, with what responsibilities and rewards? What would you like to have accomplished, in that time? How would you like to be viewed, by your peers, managers, and others you work and associate with? To reach these goals, what would you need to know, be able to do, and what personal characteristics would you need to build (on)?

Your personal circle of excellence: Draw a circle. Think of a situation where you were really “on,” where you were at your best. What personal characteristics made you shine in that situation? Write these in your circle. Repeat, with another situation. Find your own stories of excellence, and your personal qualities that made you proud of yourself in that situation. These are your qualities, yours to use in other situations. When you are in a situation that is challenging, draw on your circle of excellence to remind yourself you have what it takes to shine in this situation. And these are the qualities you have to build on, as you expand your circle of excellence.

Your benchmark: Think of stellar architects, leaders, strategists, innovators, politicians, technologists you have worked with, and think of what capabilities and qualities made them effective.

You might find it helpful to use the chart at right, to think about where you are, and where you would like to be. The axes refer to the architect competency bands in the Architect Competency Framework below.

Formulate your own personal development plan. Please share it with us (email: ruth at bredemeyer.com); we will maintain your confidentiality and only use your input to improve our offerings. It will enable us to better serve you.

Please ask other architects in your network of influence to do this. It will be valuable to them to reflect on their aspirations and path to achieving their career objectives, and we would value their input. So, please point them to this page: Design Your Own Curriculum (or http://www.ruthmalan.com/Journal/JournalCurrent.htm#Design_Your_Own_Curriculum).

We would strongly prefer to hear what you believe will help you develop along your architect career path, rather than get your reactions to what we have proposed, though the latter is of value too. 

Understanding the "foundation" layer (in the table below) assumes you are aware of our Visual Architecting (VAP) workshops, and in particular that you understand that these were designed to weave a “full-encounter” experience that mimics the multi-dimensional nature of architecting in the real world, helping to stimulate a focus shift as well as providing useful techniques that help the architect along the path to good, right and successful architecture.

For the other development layers, we will figure out which pieces get delivered in which formats (reading, online training, workshops, community of practice formats like share/learn/do/reflect/debrief, team interventions, etc.) at a later point, once the topics have been firmed up.

 

	Technical Lead, Project Architect	Product Line, Domain or Portfolio Architect	Chief Architect
Ground work	Project experience UML, RUP Design patterns	Architect experience VAP
Foundation	Architecture concepts and practices (VAP workshop, 4 days) Architect role and competencies (3 days)	Architecting across products: concepts and practices for product line and portfolio architects (4 days)	Case studies in excellence: leaders, strategists, innovators, and politicians
Good: technically sound	Technical specialist topics/ Patterns and practices: -   services -   security -   integration -   resource management -   scalability and availability -   decomposition and (re)factoring -   distribution and remoting - system health monitoring - business intelligence Conceptualization and visual modelling Architecture case studies	System thinking and system modelling Patterns and practices addressing multi-product/cross-system concerns: -   integration -   consistency and integrity -   leverage Product line (platform/family) case studies	Technical strategy Technology briefings  Architecting business capabilities
Right: meets stakeholder goals and concerns	System concept formulation and architectural requirements Creativity and innovation Technical Risk Management Trade-off analysis Design reviews	System envisioning and innovation Product and portfolio strategy Roadmaps, radars and dashboards Architecture assessments	Business strategy Strategy and innovation briefings
Successful: delivering strategic value	Giving and receiving feedback Technical communication Architect case studies	Group facilitation Leading teams Technical consulting Persuasion and influence, communication and effectiveness Dealing with politics, parochialism and anarchy (negotiation and conflict management)	Leadership: leading change, leading across organizations Leadership briefings Consulting with business leaders Organizational politics

This curriculum leverages our Architecture Competency Framework and Competency Elaborations, by Ruth Malan and Dana Bredemeyer:

• Architect Competency Framework (6 kb). 1 page summary of the architect's domains of competency (what you know, what you do, and what you are).  

• Leadership Competency Elaboration (21 kb). This module elaborates on the leadership competency domain in our Architect Competency Framework. 

• Strategy Competency Elaboration (19 kb). This module elaborates on the strategy competency domain in our Architect Competency Framework. You may be interested in our Strategy Primer for Architects. 

• Organizational Politics Competency Elaboration (25 kb). This module elaborates on the politics (or organizational effectiveness) competency domain in our Architect Competency Framework. 

• Technology Competency Elaboration (26 kb). This module elaborates on the technology competency domain in our Architect Competency Framework.