1. My definition of the responsibilities of an architect is as follows :
1) Comprehensively understand business requirements with engineering thinking
2) Abstract simplification based on model and basic mode
3) Propose an appropriate and feasible overall solution
4) Accomplish clear goals within limited resources
5) Meet business needs and ensure system quality
The architect's sense of responsibility is very important, because the architectural work is often in an embarrassing situation that is important but not urgent. If the architect does not pay attention to this aspect, how can he do it well? Of course, if you only focus on technical architecture and not on business goals,
Even more unqualified, every member of the project team needs to understand the business goals and work hard for them.
Preface: Competencies and Responsibilities of Architects (July 2016)
2. One role is called CTO, another role is called technical vice president, or engineering president, these two requirements are different. I think the most important thing for a CTO is that you decide the technical direction and product direction of the company. If you are a vice president of technology, your main function is execution, that is, management, these two roles are different.
I remember Feng Dahui once said that the role of technology is often overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long run. In fact, it is also very simple. For a company, the R&D department is a pure investment and pure consumption department. Although it is the foundation of the company, it may not be directly linked to revenue. Cost awareness is very, very persistent for a CTO or VP of technology. You can't say that you have the luxury of coming out of a big company, or that you have to recruit people desperately after you have just raised money, or you need to make a single breakthrough.
3. Improving operational capabilities is the foundation of architecture evolution . This is not a technical issue in itself, but an awareness issue that requires engineers to do a lot of meticulous research and thinking.
The last thing to talk about is the contradiction between global optimization and local optimization . We often encounter in development that after optimizing for a certain problem, there are other problems in the system. For complex systems, most engineers often only focus on a certain part of the system. The idea of solving problems is limited by their horizons, and it is easy to fall into local optimality, and local solutions are often more complex and concise than the overall situation. Engineers need to have a broad vision and understand the system architecture from a higher level, so as to understand the nature of the problem and solve it from a global perspective.