Part of my role includes mentoring, and that includes working with people who are experienced architects, people who are new to the role and people that are aspiring architects. For me, it's a very valuable part of my role because not only do I get to help others, it also helps me better understand my own role as an architect. I know that may sound a little strange, but I'm a firm believer that explanation leads to clarification, in everybody's mind.

Something that I thought would be useful to readers of The Pragmatic Architect (which I know includes experienced and aspiring architects) is to ask people that are new to the role to share their first experiences. We've all been there and I think that reading about other peoples experiences is a great way to gain more insight about what it means to be an architect. Also, it provides a way to highlight some of the common issues/misunderstandings/questions about the role, reassuring others that they are not alone on their journey to becoming a technical architect.

A few people have already been kind enough to share their own first experiences and they genuinely do provide some fascinating insight. In fact, some of them even made me step back and think about the role of an architect and how it's defined, which I admit I wasn't really expecting to happen. I'll publish the first of these over the next couple of days. If you would like to share your own experiences and have them published on the site, I'd really like you to get in touch.

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Posted by Simon Brown on 22 March 2006 20:03:00 GMT #