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IN THIS SECTION, YOU WILL: Get an overview of the resources in the appendix.

As we bring this book to a close, I would like to equip you with a helpful appendix. These resources have proven vital in my journey as an IT architect and have reminded me about what I always need to know about crucial aspects of IT practice. I routinely refer back to them and carry them in my practitioner “backpack,” so I added their summaries in the appendix.

Inspiration and Further Learning:

  • Favorite Quotes: a selection of my favorite quotes about architecture.
  • Bookshelf: an overview of the background work to probe further, linking several external resources inspiring my work.

Tools for Growing Architects:

  • Managing & Growing Architects: A framework for managing and developing architects by combining honest feedback, personalized growth paths, and strategic alignment to foster high performance and team engagement.

  • Hiring Architects: Hiring architects effectively requires a structured, multi-stage process that evaluates both technical and interpersonal skills while ensuring alignment with organizational culture and leadership expectations.

  • Onboarding Architects: An Overlooked Yet Critical Step: A structured, high-touch onboarding process is essential to help architects quickly align with organizational goals, contribute meaningfully, and uphold the principles of Grounded Architecture.

  • Interview Questions for Hiring IT Architects: A structured set of interview questions for IT architects, helping assess both technical competence and soft skills while providing practical guidance for interpreting candidate responses.

  • Architect Archetypes: Explores various architectural leadership archetypes and frameworks, including Will Larson’s Staff roles, Gregor Hohpe’s movie-inspired metaphors, Gergely Orosz’s software engineer archetypes, and TOGAF’s structured approach, providing insights to help architects define their roles and responsibilities effectively.

Tools for Navigating Workplace Dynamics:

  • Effective Communication: This section synthesizes various resources specifically designed to enhance your ability to communicate effectively, provide constructive feedback, and manage challenging conversations with confidence and clarity. These resources are not just theoretical, but they provide practical strategies and techniques that you can apply in your daily interactions.

  • Resources for Working With Toxic Colleagues: This section summarizes how challenging personalities like the Kiss-Up/Kick-Down, Credit Stealer, and Bulldozer in high-pressure environments can undermine team dynamics. However, techniques such as documenting contributions and fostering transparency can help manage their negative impact.

  • Resources for Dealing With Scapegoating at Work: This section summarizes how professionals in high-pressure environments, such as IT and software engineering, can avoid unfair blame for systemic issues through strategies like clear communication, documentation, and fostering shared accountability.

Pragmatic Knowledge Resources:

  • EIC/ISO 25010 Standard focuses on product quality and system quality models. While imperfect, this standard is a reasonably complete yet compact source for understanding software maintainability, security, reliability, and performance efficiency.

  • Cloud Design Patterns offer a mix of crucial distributed system and messaging system topics combined with modern public cloud engineering themes.

  • Characteristics of High Performing Organizations from the ‘Accelerate’ book by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim is an excellent source of empirical knowledge about crucial practices of high-performing technology organizations.

Software Tools:

Summary
← Summary
Appendix 1: Inspiration and Further Learning
Favorite Quotes →