Structured Program to Groom Enterprise Architects in a Large IT Service Organization

Santosh Mohanty
VP and Head of Components Engineering Group, Tata Consultancy Services , India

Santosh writes:-

In July 2009, we initiated EA STAR program with a mission to enable our high-performing senior employees to take up enterprise-level solution consulting and architectural leadership positions in our customer engagement. We set stringent target for ourselves during the year: to identify a team of 500 senior employees who can be positioned (or has the potential to be positioned) at CxO-level architecture advisory and leadership positions in our customer engagements. The approximate distribution of these target positions is: 50% for large-scale solution delivery and implementation assurance, 40% to drive opportunity creation and large-deal wins and 10% in CIO/CTO equivalent roles in customer organization.

To this effect, the program was planned in three major steps:

• On-Boarding: To identify senior high-performing employees who can take up enterprise architect level role
• Enablement: To broaden the employee capabilities in multiple dimensions and groom them to be positioned in architectural leadership role
• Positioning: To map employees to the customer account and new opportunities, and proactively drive them in customer-facing lead architectural role so that they can exhibit their solution envisioning and architectural leadership skills in formal customer interactions & engagements

The business leadership team proactively steered the EA STAR candidates of their unit into architecture leadership positions at an appropriate level with customers.

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