From Tech Lead to Architect — Part 1: IT consulting process

What happens after Sales Manager finds a potential client and what is a Software Architect`s role here?

Understanding of how consulting works is a must to become a Software Architect.

Dmytro Ovcharenko is a Senior Solutions Architect from SoftServe Development Center in Dnipro. He`s involved both in the direct implementation of projects and in consulting activities for client acquisition. In this article he will go through IT consulting process and figure the place of an Architect in it.

Types of Software Architects in consulting

Farmers — work independently or as part of an architectural team on one project when a client has already signed a contract and agreed on a scope of work. More frequently are involved in implementation only.

Hunters — participate in consulting processes together with sales and delivery teams to attract new business (new customers or new contracts with existing ones). The hunter participates in presale, discovery and assessment activities.

Here is the scheme of what a hunter`s place in IT consulting process is.

IT consulting process in a nutshell

Step 1. To find a potential client (prospect) with a clear need to solve a business problem or achieve a business goal.

Responsible — Sales Executives or Client Partners

Step 2. Pre-sale stage — to turn a prospect into a client (to sign a contact)

Responsible — Tech team, that includes:

• Sales Executive or Client Partner, who attracted this client,
• Engagement manager that drives the organizational part: makes appointments, provides materials, tracks the process, reminds key points when needed, and also helps the clients who have not worked with consulting companies before to understand the process and tasks,
• Architect,
• Business Analyst,
• Technical expert, for example, Data Science or ML, depending on the client specifics,
• Managers of different levels, depending on the size of the client’s company.

How pre-sale goes?

Step 1. A call with the client

All team members attend this call to discuss the client`s need and get as much information as possible.

An Architect needs to be thoroughly prepared and have all questions in advance, otherwise, the conversation will be too general, without specifics.

Some key points to ask:

• Business goals: what does your client want to achieve?
• Architectural drivers: what are functional and non-functional requirements (at least in general terms)?
• Assumptions
• Risks

Usually, we do not have enough time to talk over all questions, so we discuss the most critical ones and email the rest after the call.

Step 2. Proposal development

We analyze all the information, we got from the client, and prepare one of the following documents:

• Presentation — a sketch of our vision and an estimate of project costs. It can be high-level or detailed, depending on the situation.
• State of work — a legal document and the base for contract conclusion. This draft is reviewed by internal stakeholders, finalized, and sent to the client for signature.

What follows pre-sale? There are few options

Implementation

A fairly common practice in many companies, but the risky one. We at SoftServe do not use. As pre-sale is a short activity, up to 2 weeks, it is difficult to understand all requirements, so there is a high risk of faulty estimates. That`s why a client may not get the expected result from the chosen solution.

Assessment of the client’s current projects

This is particularly necessary when:

• Client buys another company, and their software needs to be checked. The client usually needs only a report, and this is where the project ends.
• Client has a real problem that needs to be assessed. In such cases we prepare a report and recommendations to eliminate this problem. This is often followed by the implementation of the developed plan.

Discovery

It`s on-site sessions with the client to work out the requirements in more details and develop documentation — Implementation Proposal, Architecture Vision, Roadmap, and Estimates. Now, during the lockdown, we are conducting these sessions online.

This format is needed when we know only general descriptions and do not understand what our client specifically needs.

Depending on the scale of the client’s request, the terms vary from 3 weeks to 1.5 months.

For the trip/online session you need to prepare:

• Agenda
• Stakeholder RACI matrix (the list of people to talk to). If you do not know the names, you can indicate the positions, for example, Chief DevOps Engineer, Lead Security Engineer, or Tech Leads.
• Vision template
• Basic information on the client, such as, with whom they have previously worked and what software they use. You can find it on the internet.

Before starting work, I advise to have a kick-off meeting with a client, announce the agenda and your expectations. It is also important to discuss the list of stakeholders with whom the sessions are critical, and to get a confirmation that those people will be available to you.

A closer look at Discovery agenda

Part 1 (first few days)

Goal: collect functional and non-functional requirements, business goals.

To do this, we hold meetings with stakeholders, organize Quality Attribute Workshop (will write about it in my next article) and Design Thinking Workshop.

As a result, we get a set of architectural drivers that become a base to proceed to the second part.

Part 2

Goal: prepare solution sketches.

I strongly recommend not to work on your own at this stage. Conduct knowledge sharing with technical experts from the client’s side, share your assumptions and sketches to immediately validate and discuss them.

At SoftServe, we use several methodologies for system design and analysis such as ADD, Attribute Driven Design, and ATAM, Method for Architecture Evaluation. The documenting process is entirely built around Documenting Software Architectures: Views and Beyond. Each of the methodologies deserves a separate article. For novice architects, I suggest reading on documentation, as it is an integral part of the architect’s work, be it a farmer or a hunter.

The result of the discovery is a presentation with outcomes of the discovery session, architecture vision document, detailed team composition, detailed roadmap and budget, and software requirements specification.

The discovery is successful when the client has signed the contract for the implementation of the proposed solution and a new delivery team is formed for it.