Interview with Jacqui Read
At Dear Architects, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Jacqui Read, an internationally recognised solution and enterprise architect, speaker, and author. With a rich background spanning multiple industries and a deep passion for collaborative modelling, knowledge management, and modernising architecture practices.
Jacqui shares her journey into architecture, her design philosophy, the challenges she's overcome, and her vision for the future of our craft. This conversation is packed with wisdom for both aspiring and seasoned architects alike.
Where to find her:
What inspired you to become an architect?
I was a full-stack web developer for nearly 10 years, across multiple industries, and then my role was made redundant. I looked around at developer roles, but spotted an architecture role. It sounded like what I really enjoyed from my current work, and I realised I had been doing some architecture without the title. It was great to step into a role that allowed me to do the things I most enjoyed in my work.
Was there a defining moment or project early in your career that shaped your approach?
I noticed early in my development career that knowledge sharing is generally bad. Wherever I have worked I have always managed to improve the knowledge sharing and workflows, even if I have had to do it without support. Creating a shared mental model of the system is key to its success.
How would you describe your architectural philosophy in a sentence?
Architecture is only part of an iterative software development feedback loop. You must understand context, inform architecture through design activities, architect, and implement, again and again.
Can you walk us through how you approach a new design project, from concept to completion?
The first thing is to understand the context. Even if I am handed a list of requirements I do not trust it. I find out about the context and talk to the stakeholders. Collaborative approaches to the design of the product or system are essential to get input from all stakeholders. I then iterate through design and architecture, working with development teams and tech leads to get their input. Once implementation has started it is important to work with those who are implementing to feed back into the architecture and design.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in a project, and how did you overcome it?
One problem I have come across multiple times is someone (or a team) who doesn’t want to accept any feedback on their design or architecture. They have worked on it so long that it has become their baby. This can cause delays to changes or end up with something that doesn’t work going into production. The key to this is collaboration. Don’t work on anything for too long before asking for input. This doesn’t mean a formal approval process, but a culture of informal feedback and collaboration.
How do you balance creativity with practicality in large-scale projects?
Creativity is important. Without it we would have no innovation, doing things the way we have always done them. We would also not come up with successful solutions to complex problems. Collaboration between a diverse set of minds enables creativity. Diverse means different roles, backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, etc. What you do not want is an echo chamber where everyone agrees all the time. More perspectives means more opportunities. Methods such as Time Alone, or 1-2-4-all, are great for getting opinions from people who might not speak up otherwise.
What inspires you most in your work as an architect?
Helping to create a product that meets the needs of both the user and the business is rewarding, especially when it is helping to improve the lives of customers in some way. I love collaborating across the business with both technical, business, and the customer, and acting as an enabler or translator.
Who or what has had the biggest influence on your thinking and approach to architecture?
The biggest thing that influences my approach is the breadth of my experience and reading. I have worked across multiple industries including education, finance, security, retail, and geospatial. When reading or consuming other information I don’t limit myself to software or even the technical arena. I am particularly interested in design, personal knowledge management (PKM), productivity, and organisation. I apply concepts from all these disciplines and industries in my technical work, writing, and books. I am also influenced by the large circle of industry peers that I regularly interact with at conferences and online.
What trends do you think will define the next decade in architecture?
I see a movement towards more collaboration, and understanding that we have to design and architect for change. I think that the most successful software will adopt both of these approaches in its development process. I also see global politics affecting how we architect software a lot more than it has in the past. It used to be difficult to get approval to store data in the USA if you were in the EU. I see that becoming much harder to justify now in the current political climate. There will be more scrutiny of SaaS products than there was before, and more concern about vendor lock-in.
How AI is shaping modern architectural design?
The use of AI is having negative effects on code quality. Even if we are not using AI components in our architectures, or using AI to help us architect (which it definitely isn’t capable of yet), as architects we must take into account the use of AI tools for coding.
How can we counter the negative effects using our architecture? Do we need to make more lower level decisions that we would have left to development teams before, to ensure that the requirements and quality attributes of our system are maintained? Are we going to need more architecture reviews as the system is implemented to keep it on track?
When it comes to decisions about using AI components we will need to balance the impulse to jump on the AI bandwagon with knowledge about how else the functionality could be implemented. We are going to need to hone our justification skills so we can say why or why not AI should be used
What advice would you give to young architects just starting their careers?
Broaden your understanding and resist the urge to deeply understand any one thing. Your value is in knowing about options, and their pros and cons. Collaborate with stakeholders and aim to understand the context and the problem. You will need to hone your communication skills to successfully communicate your ideas, justifications, and decisions.
If you could go back and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
Software is for people, and people make software. You cannot use just logic, like computers do. People are not logical. Talking to people and understanding their needs and intentions is key to designing and architecting software. It is important to understand how people work together to create software, which will affect how your design and architecture are implemented.
What do you think about Dear Architects?
Sharing a range of high quality materials to technologists that otherwise might not be exposed to the ideas. The breadth is really important for architects.
Jacqui Read is an internationally-recognised solution and enterprise architect, and author of Communication Patterns: A Guide for Developers and Architects. She teaches public and private workshops and speaks at international conferences on topics such as architecture practices, technical communication, and systems design. Jacqui specialises in untangling and extracting value from data and knowledge, helping businesses to determine direction in complex environments.
Her professional interests include collaborative modelling, knowledge management, Domain-Driven Design, sociotechnical architecture, and modernising enterprise architecture practices.