Solution Architect

Delegator

VSHN (Product Management, Product Owners, Account Management & Sales)

Role Keepers

  • Gabriel Mainberger

  • Manuel Hutter

  • more needed

Contact

TBD chat channel & process

Purpose

Why is this role needed, what need of the organization does it address, or how is it relevant within the organization?

While VSHN offers off-the-shelf self-service products, most potential customers who approach us have unique requirements and often need a tailored solution to meet their needs. We recognize that identifying the requirements, designing a solution, and leading the technical implementation in an agile way is what makes VSHN’s solution business work—adding the glue to our scalable products and utilizing our solution building blocks to offer complete solutions.

We need capable engineers ready to perform requirements engineering, solution design, assist with offerings, and lead the technical implementation of various VSHN building blocks and products, so that our customers and the involved VSHN teams are guided through the entire process and beyond on a technical level.

Be the trusted go-to person who understands the customer’s requirements, develops a solution, guides both the customer and VSHN teams through the technical implementation, and conducts periodic reviews thereafter.
— summary of what we do

Key Responsibilities

  • Requirements engineering with (potential) customers

  • Solution design

  • Technical clarifications during the quotation process

  • Technical lead of the implementation of sold solutions

  • Review and reevaluation of solutions for existing customers

Stakeholders and Key Deliverables

Whom does this role deliver value to, and what do they need from this role?

General

  • Documented and explained solution design during the offering phase

  • Technical work planning (defined work packages) adjusted to changing needs and constraints during the implementation phase

  • Technical go-to-person during the project

Potential Customers

  • Workshops to determine requirements—what problems do they need solved, what constraints are there?

  • Teaching and Clarifications to understand requirements, technology and the proposed solution

  • Workshops to collaboratively find a solution to their problem

Existing Customers

  • Periodic, documented review and suggestions for their existing solutions and changing needs

Customer (Key) Account Manager

  • Support in technically complex matters with their customers

  • Technical coordination of inside-out (product)-driven changes affecting their customers

Product Owner and Product Manager

  • Documented customer insights or feature requests (features, new product variants, etc. that they want)

Dependencies

Customer (Key) Account Manager

  • Drive customer projects on the non-technical level to ensure this role can focus on the technical aspects throughout the process:

    • Own overall project budget and timeline and collaborate with customer to resolve such issues

    • Own resolution of all non-technical (scope change, commercial, collaboration, legal) blockers in the project

  • Approach and negotiate (sell) with customers when changes to existing solutions are needed from VSHN’s side

Product Manager

  • Clarity on what can be sold or used as building blocks for solutions including

  • Collaboration on unclear cases

  • Triggering reviews based on strategic changes, such as the introduction of new building blocks or products, or the end-of-life of existing ones.

Product Owner

  • Clarity on what the product can do and its limitations and features

  • Clarity on what the team can do and its capabilities and capacity

  • Collaboration on unclear cases

Engineering Team

  • More detailed technical work planning and coordination with customer (for example OpenShift Cluster setup)

  • Support through knowledge and experience, review of solutions, and similar needs

  • Defined work done in time, issues proactively communicated in time and collaborated on

Mindset, Skills, and Capabilities

  • Solid understanding of all current VSHN products (what we offer)

  • Hands-on setup and operations experience (distributed across all Solution Architects) with VSHN products and the relevant technology

  • Ability to understand and discuss business/economic aspects with customers and sales

  • Basic understanding of the technologies used in customer applications

  • Confidence in advocating VSHN values, strategies, and solutions, including the ability to engage in technology debates

Monitoring and Evaluation

Review (usually Peer Review) after 2 months when someone starts in this role, then every 4 months.

This role is tracked and reviewed as part of VIP-189