10 guides to advance your enterprise architect career

There are so many ways to level up your career. You can feed your mind with educational resources from individuals in your field. You can complete certifications or seek out relevant job-training opportunities. At the end of the day, it all comes back to you and what fits your needs and your lifestyle.

The IT architect of today is different from the IT architect of yesterday. Today, IT architects are expected to be on the frontlines of digital transformation. To stay ahead of this change, enterprise architects, cloud architects, senior engineers, site reliability engineers, and developers must stay sharp on all the moving parts around them. If this sounds overwhelming, that's because it is.

But that is why you make your career-advancement journey your own. Veteran tech journalist Deb Donston-Miller advises enterprise architects to "constantly level up their practice." In 3 ways enterprise architects can advance their career, she touches on key strategies enterprise architects—or any technology architect or IT leader—can use to have a meaningful impact on the business technologies and processes they support and design. The three strategies she describes are:

1. Focus on what's next: She recommends "backing-off—from some things, for now—and focusing on the one thing that will lead to what's next."
2. Carefully curate and consume content: You can "develop a list of go-to sources for reliable and relevant content relating to the company, technology, supply chain, industry, and other issues affecting the organization."
3. Be a thought leader: Demonstrate how to be a leader in and out of the office.

Everyone's definition of success is different. But immersing yourself in an environment conducive to learning is a way to integrate a seamless growth stream into your career journey.

[ You might also be interested in the free eBook An architect's guide to multicloud infrastructure. ]

I've found that my innate curiosity has helped me learn from the community of tech leaders and technologists I support for Enable Architect. Many IT architects learn from their own communities of practice, which may include their colleagues in the C-suite and direct teammates. Not every IT architect is TOGAF certified; some may be more familiar with the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture or the Gartner Enterprise Architecture framework. Some IT architects may choose to nurture their expertise through some good reading.

However you choose to progress your career, add a few of 2021's top 10 Enable Architect career-focused articles to your educational enrichment list.

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