Taking advantage of cloud-based technology in an organization’s architecture requires a dual understanding from two different perspectives – those of the solutions architect, and the enterprise architect, a Defense Department technology official said on Feb. 17.
Speaking during the GEOConnect virtual webinar, Jason Weiss, Director of Software Modernization for the office of the Defense Department (DoD) CIO, said that agencies must look at maximizing a contractual vehicle, and the investment that the department has made.
“It really starts with your agility. When you think about an agile team and you think about the sprint, and the desire to fail fast and fail smart, you’re really looking at those capabilities that you want to deliver in that two-week sprint,” said Weiss. “You’re not thinking about where do you want the system to be 12 months from now, per se.”
Weiss said that his department uses DevSecOps to move rapidly, but that that approach doesn’t always look out down the road.
“We have to differentiate between the solutions architect who may be on that DevSecOps team, and the enterprise architect who’s looking at the big picture,” said Weiss.
He added that enterprise architects should aspire to have business acumen, along with technical expertise, so that they can understand the vision and the mission more clearly.
Weiss said that “recognizing the difference between a solutions architect, and an enterprise architect will certainly help find that balance between getting the right set of cybersecurity stacks, for example, and prioritizing the features that you want to adopt that are managed services and potentially proprietary versus being locked in at another layer like a product or an [application programming interface.”
