A Solution Architect is an IT professional that uses a unique blend of technical and business skills to design and implement various software solutions.
Solution Architect are responsible for analyzing the identified business need and designing a solution that would fulfill that business need.
Most Solution Architects start their careers as software developers and are well versed in numerous technologies that would be used to design the solutions.
They are usually members of the development team and they work closely with other team members such as the Business Analyst, Product Owner, Scrum Master and Software Developers to design and implement software solutions.
The Solution Architect’s main responsibility is the technical design of the solution.
They need to identify the best solution design that would fulfill the business need and also produce the best results.
Some of their responsibilities include the following:
- How the solution can be used to fulfill an identified business need.
- How to identify the right solution that would fulfill the business need.
- Identifying the right framework or platform which can be used to create the solution.
- Identifying any additional resources needed to design and implement the solution.
- Designing the look and feel of the solution.
- Identifying which modules need to be included in the solution.
- Identifying any solution dependencies.
- Designing a solution that is dynamic enough to grow with the business.
- Building quality into the solution to help to mitigate risks.
- Properly testing the solution to identify bugs or issues.
To do their work, Solution Architects need to have a unique mix of business and technical skills.
They need to be able to understand the business problem and identify the right solutions to those problems.
Which makes the job very similar to business analysis but with more in dept technical knowledge.