Solution Architecture Analysis 

Summary

Solution architecture focusses more on the operational / project level, constantly taking the target enterprise architecture into account, pragmatically balancing between business and IT requirements, project scope, timing and budget constraints, the strengths and weaknesses of the different options in order to agree together on the solution architecture delivered by the project.

Description

A solution architect in Information Technology (IT) is a practitioner of solution architecture. Typically, as member of the solution project team, the solution architect is responsible for translating the business requirements into the IT solution architecture in agreement with all relevant domain responsible and technologies experts and describing it in a project architecture presentation or document.

Those artifacts are then used by the rest of the project team to design the solution and after review of the solution architect implement it. The process of defining architecture by the solution architect often involves selection of the most appropriate technology for the problem being solved.

The solutions architect is often considered the technical leader of the project team. As such, he/she is expected to provide motivation and guidance to the entire project team during the systems development and testing life cycle. The solutions architect needs to ensure buy-in from the project team so that the team is motivated to match the detailed design of the solution to the higher-level architecture.

Solution architects play an important role in ensuring that the solution architecture aligns with the roadmaps established by the enterprise architecture, and that it adheres to the enterprise architecture principles. Solutions architects are both a consumer and contributor to enterprise architecture collateral. Often, the patterns and guidance that are developed by solutions architects become reusable in a broader enterprise architecture context.