How to Become a Solution Architect

A solution architect stands between a business problem and a technical solution and is accountable for whether the solution fits. This cursus builds the discipline, which is judgment, not coding. Start with the role and how it differs from enterprise and technical architects. Then requirements: the functional, the non-functional quality attributes that quietly decide the architecture, and the hard constraints. Finally the craft: analyzing trade-offs, build versus buy on total cost of ownership, recording decisions with ADRs, communicating with the C4 model, and how a switcher breaks in.