For this issue of The Architecture Journal, we met upwith Paul Preiss, founder of a nonprofit group calledIASA (International Association of Software Architects). We asked Paul aboutthe goal of the organization, and some of his thoughts about the profession.

AJ: Paul, what do you do?

PP: I run the International Association of SoftwareArchitects (IASA). I spend most of my time trying to provide programs andservices to practicing and aspiring architects.

AJ: Can you tell the readers about IASA? Where and howdid it get started?

PP: IASA was founded about five years ago as a usergroup in Austin, Texas. We've grown to become the largest IT architect associationin the world, with about 7,000 members and 50 chapters across 25 countries. Ourfocus is on professional growth and support for individual architects. We alsoaim to empower the architects to own their profession the way that otherprofessionals do, such as doctors and lawyers.

I started the IASA to help stabilize my own career. Ioriginally founded the user group because I wanted to help others and get helpin my own career path as an architect. I had been practicing for about 10years, working on some of the biggest and smallest architecture problems outthere. I had run into a handful of major issues: the lack of resources targetedat the architect in the daily role; the lack of peers and the inability to findlike-minded and similarly skilled people to interact with on a peer basis; thereal lack of common definition for fundamental skill sets and the variabilityof the role across organizations; the overall difficulty of categorizing typesof architects and of evaluating competence. I've done everything from seekingjobs as an architect to hiring and managing architects. So much uncertaintymakes it very difficult for the individual architect to set a career path andfollow that career path across organizations in a way that other professionsmay take for granted.

AJ: Sometimes IT Architecture is compared to other, moremature professional fields such as medicine and law. Do you agree with thesecomparisons?

PP: The profession that we are most closely modelingin terms of professional infrastructure is medicine, and I tend to model theorganization mostly after the American Medical Association. The medicalprofession is arguably the most technically complex, mission-criticalprofession in the world today, with a tremendous volume of technical changes ona regular basis and growth in knowledge bases; and, yet, we graduate and growdoctors in a stable and regular way, through structures like clinical rotationsand certification. The reach of IT architecture is broadening. Architects havebecome integral components of industry and business, in corporate fiscal policyand execution. Architects of healthcare and space shuttle systems arespecifically entrusted with human safety. We impact the financial healthof organizations and individuals everywhere through commerce-enabled systems.We can also have a direct impact on entire societies through innovations likeYouTube, Web 2.0, and social networking. If we can prepare and support a doctorfor everything that they have to go through, creating the professionalinfrastructure to support an architect can't be as hard!

AJ: Do you believe that our industry should follow thekind of specialization that we see in the medical field?

PP: Perhaps; but, in the end, a doctor's a doctor. Ifyou're out having dinner and someone starts choking, you don't stand up andsay, "Is there an ear, nose, and throat specialist in the house?" You say, "Isthere a doctor in the house?" The general professional title has to bemeaningful before specializations can be meaningful.

A key objective in the IASA is to identify the commondifferentiator that sets our profession apart from the others. If we don't dothat—and I will be honest with you here—we will be tuned out, because businessowners I talk to don't have the bandwidth to parse software versus infrastructureversus solution versus business versus application versus enterprise. They want to know whythey should hire an architect. If you want to do the profession a favor, helpdifferentiate the profession first, and then work on specialization. Rememberthat, although lawyers and doctors go through a process of specialization, theyfirst go through a generalized education.

AJ: Can you elaborate more on this specialization aspect?

PP: Specialization can have long-term positive andnegative impacts that we need to consider. I really urge everybody reading thisarticle to think carefully about this because it's our job to define forourselves what our future will look like. If we don't do this, then someday,somebody else will define our profession for us. Specialization in medicine hasimportant insurance implications; in fact, if an oncologist or podiatristdelivers your baby and does it incorrectly, they will be protected fromlitigation by their insurance. On the other hand, doctors are generallynot covered if they practice outside of their specialization.

Given our direct impact on human safety, financial security,and society, I happen to know we are facing increasing degrees of scrutinyaround the world as a group of practitioners. The impact of future regulationand regulatory activities should be of tremendous importance to each one of us,and working ahead of regulatory trends to define our profession for ourselvesought to be an immediate priority for each of us. We need to think more aboutour profession and less about specific individual jobs whether we work forMicrosoft, Sun, American Express, Bank of America, or another company from theAmericas to Europe, to Australia, to Malaysia or anywhere else in Asia. If weconsider our profession first, then we can help stabilize future regulatoryactivities by guiding regulators to optimal decisions instead of what could bemore knee-jerk, politically guided ones should any of their activities betriggered in haste.

Personally, I feel I have a responsibility to help controlmy own professional destiny. After five years growing IASA, I have come torealize that what I do impacts how architects are perceived around the world.

AJ: What advice would you give to someone who wants tobecome an IT Architect today?

PP: Well, there are at least two important issues youneed to understand. I call the fi rst one the,"Where Developers-Go-to-Die Syndrome." The major symptom of this syndrome is,"I've been a developer for 15 years, so I guess I have to become an architectnow because that's the next natural progression." This is similar to "I'vebeen a business analyst for 15 years, so I am going to become a businessarchitect," or "I've been in operations and infrastructure for 15 years, so I'mgoing to become an infrastructure architect."

There's a notion that you can (oreven ought to) become an architect by virtue of tenure or pay scale alone.Architecture is commonly seen as a land where other roles go to die. This is anutter fallacy. Architecture is an orthogonal profession distinct fromdevelopment, business analysis, and system administration. Going back to themedical analogy: If you had been a nurse for 15 years, could you now become adoctor on grounds of tenure alone? You may have some advantages, in terms ofpractical experience over any intern; but you've still got to start at thebeginning of the medical profession. You have to finish medical school, qualifyfor your license, and complete internships; you've got to go do all thosethings.

AJ: So, where do you think these perceptions have comefrom? Who's to blame?

PP: Well, I think it is a pretty natural progression;so, in a sense, there's no one to blame. What has happened has been sort of organicin the sense of its original format, or the process of formation of the ITindustry as a whole. It is natural that IT architecture is seen as specializingalong multiple lines based on existing roles and other activities such asdevelopment, infrastructure management, and business strategy alignment. Ithink that in fact, the industry is mature enough to where those fulfilling theother roles have become comfortable investing their sense of identity in them.Architecture if often understood merely as a matter of extending what it is wealready do, or perhaps even a role granted to those with enhanced innateabilities.

On the other hand, the shape of the profession going forwardis up to us; I think we have an opportunity now to be proactive in defining ourprofession.

I recently blogged about the magician's apprentice, tryingto dispel the common notion of, "If I work for an architect, if I put this onmy title, if I study and happen to have the right sort of magical quality aboutme, I'll be a great architect." But in fact, "profession" is a rigorousconcept. Professionals are groups of people that clearly define their skillsets, their value proposition, that which differentiates them as communitiesfrom other professionals and groups, and the hoops that they and their peersmust jump through to be part of the club. That is all any profession really is.As long as the role in question is valuable to society, as we have seen ITarchitecture become over the years, then, at some point, the associated skill setsplits off and becomes completely educable; that is, you don't have to becomesomething else first. Go to the American Institute of Architects Web site, andlook at their history. You will read that the 13 foundingmembers of the AIA gathered in 1857 with the aim to "elevate the standing ofthe profession" and out of frustration that "anyone who wished to call him- orherself an architect could do so... masons, carpenters, bricklayers... No schools ofarchitecture or architectural licensing laws existed to shape the calling."That sounds an awful lot like the IT architecture profession today. So, they puta stake in the ground, and they said that is no longer acceptable; 150 yearslater, we have the building-architecture profession in its current form.

AJ: Let's hope it doesn't take us 150 years to get there.In a previous comment, you mentioned hoops that you need to jump through tojoin the architect club. What are those hoops? Is it certification?

PP: The progression of medical knowledge and learning—whatphysicians have come to understand about their profession, how they practicetheir skill set, and so on—has allowed doctors to improve the qualityof care greatly since ancient times. Keeping pace with the growth of the medical field,the professional bodies have continually raised the quality bar by creatingbigger, broader, and more sophisticated hoops for people to jump through. Thehoops right now for IT architects are being defined inside the IASA, and inother organizations, from a skills perspective. We have laid out 250+ skills inour taxonomy that defines a rigorous foundation body of knowledge and arigorous specialization body of knowledge that any individual must possess tobe a part of the club. What we call the Skills Taxonomy Project resulted in abody of articles published in collaboration with Microsoft and our members. Sothe first thing that an architect or aspiring architect can do is look at ourskills taxonomy, at our foundation body of knowledge. Regarding professionalinfrastructure, the profession will decide, for example, as most professionshave, whether the first hoop that you have to jump through is a college degree.Generally speaking, most professionals must begin their career with a collegeeducation. You are forced to get a medical degree, a law degree, an accountingdegree, a finance degree, a marketing degree, or whatever. So, sometime in thefuture, if IT architecture truly maintains its status as a profession, that willlikely be what someone will have to go through first.

Now, all degrees are primarily knowledge-based, and theyhinge upon tests. With that in mind, one of the things that we are working onnow is effectively an associate certification, which will require a juniorknowledge-based test that covers all 250+ skills in our taxonomy. We then haveto decide whether the profession needs a significant amount of practicalexperience, commonly called internships. Those internships could be provided ina very rigorous fashion or a sort of lightweight fashion: A teaching internshipis quite rigorous; a marketing internship is perhaps not as rigorous; a medicalinternship is very rigorous. We need to decide as a profession, how one progresses from the knowledge-based test to the next hoop,which will be a professional certification that simply says: "This person hasboth the knowledge and the experience to practice architecture withoutoversight on a certain sized project." However, a professional certification ascompared to associate certification will be the hardest to obtain.

A third hoop could be Master Certification, such as theMicrosoft Certified Architect programs. And that basically says that anyoneabove this line represents the top five to 10 percent of the entireprofessional body globally. I am not going to dig into all of the details ofthe infrastructure necessary to move between the major hoops, because the onesthat are of most interest are the first four, because they represent what itwould take for a bus driver to become an architect. The first four hoops are:effective training in the conceptual and practical application of the body ofknowledge—a knowledge certification, a really difficult test that certifiesthat you've properly assimilated that knowledge; an experience quotient oftencalled an internship; and, finally, a professional certification thatdifferentiates you from what IASA terms the "associate" or "junior architect" as amature individual professional who may now go out into the world and practicewithout a mentor or direct oversight. So, those are the hoops that IASA membershave identified, and those are the primary components of the comprehensiveeducation plan that our members are in the process of building.

AJ: What would be your one take-home message for thepeople who, after reading this article, are saying, "Yes, I want to be on thatpath"?

PP: Becoming an architect is a challenge, and theprocess depends on where you are starting. In general, I would recommend takinga deep look at the skills taxonomy project on the IASA site. Really dig deepinto that, even if you don't join. Many aspiring architects should be usingthat as their real decision-making point. Because, when you look at thosearticles, you'll see the depth and the breadth. I mean, I have to tell you—frommy own perspective—when we first did the taxonomy, I was in shock, because Ididn't realize it was that big. I was really surprised at how deep and far theexpectations for architects are. I recommend first reading the articles in theIASA online skills library, before deciding if architecture isreally your path. Because most people today make their decision about becomingan architect based on what they think an architect is, instead of what theoverall skills and maturity model look like. So, I would say that is their firststep. The second step, if you make the decision to become an architect, is tojoin your local chapter. If there is no chapter in your area, help found one,and get involved with the IASA training program, which will allow chaptermembers to get those skills.

AJ: Can you find active chapters through the Web site?

PP: Yes, chapters, training program, and events areaccessible from the IASA home page.

AJ: How about your own career? Where do you see yourselfin five years' time?

PP: Well, I tell you, this has been a wild ride; aneye-opening experience for me. I have the fortunate job of being able to talkto really smart people around the world, including aspiring, professional andmaster architects, about really interesting challenges facing our profession. Idon't see myself giving that up any time soon. It's my passion.

In five years, I want to be doing exactly what I am doingnow—which is helping architects control their own careers, their ownprofession, building infrastructure and programs to help architects in theirdaily jobs, helping organizations best utilize architects to execute theirtechnology strategies and get financial or other types of values. Like I said,you are going to have to pry my hands off of the grid because it is such a funjob. And if there's any measure of success that I can see, it's in the e-mailsand discussions I receive saying that the programs that we're putting inplace—the education, the community, and so forth—are actually helping people doa better job, understand their jobs better, plan their own personal careerpaths and really feel they have a chance to achieve their goals. That's themeasure of success, and it's gratifying; I believe that I really could do thisforever.

This articlewas published in the Architecture Journal, a print and online publicationproduced by Microsoft. For more articles from this publication, please visitthe Architecture Journal Web site.