IT architecture isn’t just about software and design patterns. Modern organizations require architects who can forge a connection between the business penthouse to the IT engine room. Riding the Architect Elevator presents architects with fantastic opportunities, but it can’t be learned just by just reading a book or watching a few TED talks. Combining lecture, discussion, exercises, and role-playing, my highly interactive workshops allow IT architects and leaders to expand their scope of influence and drive change in an organization.

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

By interacting directly with a former chief architect, participants learn how to identify and communicate the impact of technical decisions on a business strategy and vice versa.

Architecting IT Transformation

Building a bridge between traditional and digital-native companies helps attendees identify cultural blockers and debunk popular myths.

Thinking like an Architect

Complexity is an architect’s biggest enemy. That’s why we employ models and complex systems theory to improve decision discipline and transparency.

Think like an Architect

We use real-live examples from internet-scale architectures 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 hone their presentation and moderation techniques to engage C-level stakeholders without watering down content.

Communicate with Confidence & Content

While the workshop doesn’t depend on specific technologies, exercises draw on modern architectures and methods, such as microservices, cloud automation, or agile methods.

Audience & Participant Take-aways

The workshop equips enterprise or IT architects, technical IT managers, technical program managers, and senior engineers with a good grasp of:

  • the changing role of architects
  • the scope of a chief architect’s role
  • the mindset and operating model differences between “digital” and traditional companies
  • driving change by applying architectural thinking to organizational structures
  • pitching complex technical topics to an executive audience
  • improving decision making with options theory and models

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 complex 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 and steer external vendors

Format and Options

This 2-day workshop is limited to 12 participants to ensure maximum value for each attendee. It can be extended with the following deep-dives:

  • Technical writing and communication
  • Drawing like an architect
  • Distributed system design
  • Platform engineering

Please contact me via the links below.