Leadership for the IT Professional

Yes, I did go back on my words, cause Valentine's definitely wasnt the time to Post a piece on Leadership ! :) So here it is reproduced for the curious few, inclusive of me :)

Leadership means getting something done through other people. Leadership is not equivalent to management. Leadership requires the effective coordination of resources that are often not directly under the leader’s control:

• A leader accepts the responsibility for the success of a project or organization and provides selfless giveback and support to ensure everyone’s success.
• A leader recognizes the need to change, adapt, and innovate – and they find effective ways to communicate those needs to the organization.
In order to understand the meaning of architectural leadership it is necessary to understand that any professional can be a leader. Leadership is essential for all IT professionals who wish to progress in their careers.

Examples of leadership in a technical context are:

• Establishing and driving a new architectural vision or direction in order to adapt to changing business dynamics
• Developing a new technical standard or framework as part of a standards body
• Setting and maintaining the direction of a team of IT professionals to achieve a common goal
• Resolving a complex technical problem by developing new tooling or techniques
• Designing a new innovative solution IT architecture that changes the way an organization does business or establishes a new IT industry view or initiative
• Helping the organization to recognize weak links in their technical strategy and implementation in a way that helps to facilitate the organizations closure of gaps
• Facilitating the implementation of a significant and complex architectural initiative through other technical members of the organization – this is often accomplished through mentorship, enablement, and giveback
• Acting in the role of the technical advocate by [recommending] an innovative IT solution that changes the dynamics of the business environment; a technical advocate works with business leaders to consider strategic changes to the business – facilitates entry into new markets – and responds to changing market dynamics.
• Being seen as a role model by team members

Architectural leadership for the Chief/Lead IT Architect is defined as leading the creation and realization of a sufficiently complex system or enterprise architecture that is:

• Critical to the business
• Significant and complex – non-trivial and meaningful to the business
• Innovative
• Recognized as essential across multiple organizations or multiple lines of business
• Visible to stakeholders including, for example, customers or business partners

I came across this in my general reading and wished to Archive it in my own blog instead of the usual save / bookmark as favourite. Hope it helped.

lotsa luc,

~ sayli :)