Role Models
Great minds and big ideas shape architectural decisions.
The decisions that I T architects make are informed by a variety of factors and influences, including an up-to-date knowledge
of available technologies, a thorough understanding of how best to apply those technologies to solve the problem at hand, and the
input of project stakeholders. These factors
are common to every I T architect—or at least
they should be. But what other, perhaps less
tangible factors come into play? For instance,
does the benevolent specter of a role model
ever hover just over the shoulders of I T architects as they work toward a solution? How
does that role model shape the individual
architect? I asked several architects to tell me
about their role models.
Randy Stafford, a member of Oracle’s
Server Technologies A-Team (that’s A for
Architecture), divides his role models into
two groups. “The first are seers and teachers,
architecturally literary people with a rare gift
for perceiving the essence of a relevant topic
and having the dedication and skill to clearly
convey it in published works for the benefit
of the profession,” he says. For Stafford,
that list of luminaries includes object-oriented programming expert Martin Fowler,
engineering and space pioneer Eberhardt
Rechtin, author and object-oriented programming consultant Rebecca Wirfs-Brock,
and several others. “Their contributions to
the literature of the software profession have
given me, and many other software architects, a body of insight on which to base our
daily practice and to develop and communicate new learnings in a hopefully perpetual
process,” Stafford says.
Stafford describes his second group of
role models as “those who have served
as guardians of the conceptual integrity
of a software system over a long span of
time.” One such role model from early in
Stafford’s career is a man who wrote and
installed his own assembly language for
a CDC Cyber mainframe. “He developed a
MAY/JUNE 2012
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
When you start
a project, what
benevolent specter
is hovering over
your shoulder?
software stack that was critical to the oper-
ations of an aerospace company for several
decades,” Stafford says. Gene Gleyzer,
the chief architect of Oracle Coherence, is
another of Stafford’s role models. “Gene
exercised responsibility for the algorithms
involved in Oracle Coherence’s data man-
agement capabilities, among other things,
since well before Oracle Coherence 1.0 was
released,” Stafford says. “These kinds of
people exemplify what it means to be a
software architect.”
Eric Stephens, a director of enterprise
architecture at Oracle, mentions enterprise
architecture pioneer John Zachman as one of
his role models. “Zachman really expanded
my thinking of architecture and emphasized
the need to engineer the enterprise, like one
might engineer an aircraft or ship,” Stephens
says. Stephens also cites Leonardo da Vinci
and Steve Jobs as role models. “Both of these
gentlemen leveraged their artistic and cre-
ative energy to conceptualize—and in Job’s
case, implement—great works of artful engi-
neering,” Stephens says.
There is also an Apple Inc. connection in
Oracle Enterprise Architect Pat Shepherd’s
choice for role model: venture capitalist and
former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki. “He
has a unique way of breaking a problem
down into simple terms,” says Shepherd.
Shepherd points out that although the term
architect doesn’t appear in Kawasaki’s bio,
“he has always been at that intersection
of business value, vision, and technology.”
Shepherd believes that Kawasaki’s book Rules
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for Revolutionaries (HarperBusiness, 2000)
belongs on every enterprise architect’s book-
shelf, “right next to the TOGAF [the Open
Group Architecture Framework] manual.”
Dr. Karina Ishkhanova, technical lead for
payment systems architecture and design at
School-Day Solutions, credits science fiction
writer Isaac Asimov as having a profound
influence on her career. “When I was 10
years old, I read his short story “Profession,”
and it stuck with me for the years to come,”
Ishkhanova says. “He inspired me to be dif-
ferent—first to dream and then to build upon
that dream.” Ishkhanova finds similarities
between system architecture and Asimov’s
futuristic fiction. “On a daily basis, system
architects, armed with logic and vision, build
a new reality,” she says, adding that she looks
to Asimov’s work for inspiration. “When I
start a new project, I try to find an edge that
will make it unique and innovative, some-
thing that will allow others to grow further
and extend.”
When you start a project, what benevo-
lent specter is hovering over your shoulder?
Whose thoughts influence your decisions?
How are those thoughts shaping you as
an architect?
Bob Rhubart
(bob.rhubart@oracle
.com) is manager of the
architect community
on Oracle Technology
Network, the host of the
Oracle Technology Network ArchBeat podcast
series, and the author of the ArchBeat blog
( blogs.oracle.com/archbeat).
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