IT architecture is much more than UML diagrams and design patterns. IT architects and technical leaders can grow their impact by actively linking the IT engine room and the organization’s leadership. By tackling complexity with models, more effectively communicating with senior management, and influencing the organization, they achieve better decision discipline, stronger management buy-in, and faster value delivery to the business.
Architects who are able to ride the Architect Elevator from the upper floors to the IT engine room are in high demand, because many organizations suffer from a disconnect between the two. Sadly, it’s not a skill that you can learn from reading books or watching TED talks. Being mentored by a senior architect on the job is ideal, but attending a highly interactive workshop led by a former chief architect is a close second.
I am happy to be again offering such workshops with a combination of lecture, discussion, exercises, and role-playing. My workshops build on two fundamental premises:
1) The most valuable architect is the one who can cover more levels of an organization.
2) Architects aren’t the smartest people in the team. They make everyone else smarter.
From this foundation, we’ll tackle strategy and transformation, organizations and politics, decisions and trade-offs, systemic thinking and modeling, plus effective communication in presentations, diagrams, and documents.
Upcoming workshops
- Riding the Architect Elevator, Jan 27/28, 2025 in London (as part of NDC London)
I also teach private workshop for organizations of all kinds. Please contact me via the links at the bottom of this page to find out more.
Workshop Formats and Target Audiences
I offer the workshop in three formats, each tailored to a different context and audience. Limiting the workshop to 12-15 participants ensures maximum value for each attendee.
Ride the Architect Elevator (2 days + optional modules)
Targeted at practicing or aspiring architects, technical product managers, and senior developers, this workshop teaches participants how expressive models help them communicate technology decisions across the layers of an organization. Optional deep dive modules provide intensive coaching in drawing and presenting technical content, or dive into engine room topics like cloud architecture, platform strategy, or distributed systems.
Upgrade Your Architects (5 days + optional modules)
This combination of lecture and working sessions operationalizes architecture teams to rethink and expand their role inside the organization. We jointly review existing ways of working both inside the team and within the project portfolio to make concrete recommendations for growth and change. Technical modules that review the team’s cloud or platform strategy are also available.
The Architect Elevator for IT Leaders (1.5 days)
The role of IT leaders changes just as much as the role of architects: “management by remote control” is no longer sufficient because technical decisions made in the IT engine room determine your business’ future success. This workshop shows IT leaders how the rules of IT management have changed, and helps them re-connect to their IT engine room to improve decision discipline and transparency.
Workshop Concepts: Reimagining the Role of Architects
Reverse-Engineer and Influence Organizations
Architects live in the middle of a sociotechnical system that depends on the interplay of complex technology and complex organizations, staffed with individuals that bring their own agenda and incentives. Architects can’t succeed by just tackling one side or the other, so we openly discuss how to read between the lines of an org chart and how to use organizational constraints to your advantage.
Think like an Architect: Systems, Models, and Metaphors
Complexity is an architect’s biggest enemy. Models and complex systems theory are the most powerful tools to improve decision discipline and transparency. Engaging metaphors convey decisions and trade-offs across organizational layers.
Lead with Content, Communicate with Confidence
Because too many training seminars focus purely on presentation style, this workshop empowers attendees to deliver technical content and moderate discussions with C-level stakeholders–without watering down the message.
Engine Room
The workshops don’t depend on specific technologies or products. Instead, exercises draw on modern architectures and methods, such as microservices, cloud automation, platform engineering, or DevOps. Optional engine rooms modules dive deeper into these topics.
Audience & Participant Take-aways
Workshop participants will be able to:
- reverse-engineer an organization’s beliefs and influence them
- clearly articulate the value of architecture in times of change and uncertainty
- communicate technical topics and their merit across the organization
- tackle the complexity of large-scale systems by using models and systems thinking
- make principle-based architectural decisions
- navigate organizational politics
I offer these workshops primarily as on-site training sessions. Please contact me via the links below. See above for open enrollment workshops.