Digital transformation requires architects who can ride the Architect Elevator from the business penthouse to the IT engine room. While it presents architects with fantastic opportunities, it also brings formidable challenges, such as connecting business and IT strategy or communicating at different organizational levels. These aren’t skills that can be learned just by just reading a book or watching a TED talk. Combining lecture, discussion, exercises, and role-playing, my highly interactive workshops give architects and IT leaders a new perspective on their role in an IT transformation.

Upcoming Workshops

2-day workshop on February 23-24, 2020 in New York City as part of O’Reilly’s Software Architecture Conference.

Please contact me via the links at the bottom of this page if you’d like me to teach a workshop at your company.

Architecting IT Transformation

Interacting directly with a chief architect and CTO advisor, architects, technical managers, and learn how to “zoom in and zoom out” to understand the linkage between technical capabilities and major industry trends.

Architecting IT Transformation

Examining the differences between traditional and digital companies helps identify cultural blockers and debunk several myths.

Thinking like an Architect

A few floors further down, architects practice essential tools to tackle complexity and improve decision making: models, patterns, and complex systems theory.

Think like an Architect

Transitioning into the engine room, participants learn the architectural drivers behind internet-scale and self-healing systems.

Communicating with Confidence & Content

While many training seminars focus on either presentation style or technical content, this workshop lives at the very intersection: attendees learn presentation and visual moderation techniques that engage C-level stakeholders without watering down content.

Communicate with Confidence & Content

While the workshop doesn’t focus on specific technologies, exercises are based on modern architectures and methods, such as microservices, infrastructure automation, container technology, cloud computing, and lean and agile methods.

Audience & Participant Take-aways

Enterprise or IT architects, technical IT managers, technical program managers, and senior engineers equally benefit from this workshop by gaining an understanding of:

  • a chief architect’s role
  • tipping points created by technical and non-technical changes
  • the mindset and operating model differences between “digital” and traditional companies
  • architectural thinking applied to complex organizations
  • pitching complex topics to CxOs effectively
  • tackling complexity with systems thinking to improve decision discipline
  • improving the economics of software delivery

Participants will be able to:

  • reverse-engineer an organization’s beliefs and influence them
  • clearly articulate the value of architecture in a digital transformation
  • communicate complex technical topics and their merit to both upper management and technical teams
  • “Zoom in and out” of a technical topic to understand the context and unlock its potential
  • cut through the complexity of large-scale systems by using models and systems thinking
  • make disciplined and principle-based architectural decisions
  • navigate organizational politics, harness complexity, and steer external vendors

The workshops generally take two days and are designed for up to 12 participants. They can be tailored to specific needs, such as adding a third day to apply the concepts to concrete customer examples. Please contact me via the links below.