Beyond the technical: Small steps to playing bigger (aligning teams focus with stakeholders targets)

Maggie Carroll teaches you how to develop influence through relationship building and a tool for moving from a fire-fighting mode to proactive ownership, which she created as an enterprise architect. She also shares useful skills and actionable techniques for creating a new enterprise architecture function and a tool for remaining productive as a leader.

Software architects and enterprise architects (EA) work with a variety of roles across the organization. The combination of time pressure and stakeholder involvement can result in a feeling of fighting fires. Maggie Carroll teaches you how to develop influence through relationship building, using actionable techniques and a tool for moving from a feeling of fire-fighting to a feeling of proactive ownership, which she developed as an enterprise architect. You’ll explore a framework for avoiding the fire-fighting mode and remaining productive as a leader in under 10 hours a week. You’ll also take an honest look at the level of success and pivoting for starting up a new EA function in an IT team comprised of solution architects leading Agile Scrum teams. Using the framework she developed for “managing [her]self,” Maggie learned that her influence over others grew. Drawing on her real-world experience, she explains what worked and what required a pivot. The first step is to ask what the goal is and begin with the end in mind. You must align with corporate strategy, find alignments with business partners, and identify artifacts to communicate ongoing success, such as a road map or a schedule. Gaining influence starts with ownership—business partners are key stakeholders. Learn how to grow your effectiveness with stakeholders, coworkers, folks you’re leading, and your own leadership by doing a few key steps consistently for a few minutes each day. To energize your team, you need to create opportunities for success with skill development, including effective estimation, governance that works, deciding whether or not to meet, and the need to celebrate, acknowledge, and reward. And you have to lather, rinse, and repeat by continuing to evaluate, ask questions, implement improvements, and communicating with the stakeholders.