Abstract:

At the end of the twentieth century, an individual or a small company could design and develop an application or some bigger and scalable systems, but due to its increasing complexity, project size and the higher levels of integration, the need for new roles and processes associated with software development drastically increased, reaching a role of overall integrity assurance.

A new role, called “Solution Architect”, emerged over time and has been formally used in leading companies such as IBM but its scope and typical responsibilities remain to be correctly defined.

Focusing on the Retail sector, this research builds upon the experience of seven Solution Architects from a leading Information Technology and Consulting company inquiring them on their perspectives on the topic through an internal survey in order to infer the boundaries of this new role and its understanding.
 
By the end of this research, it was clear that the interpretation of this role’s span across a project’s lifecycle was not the same, instead, it was shaped according to each projects’ geography and unique interpretation.