Solution Architect

Role Keepers

Gabriel Mainberger, Manuel Hutter

Delegator

Marketing & Sales (Account Management), Team Sol

Purpose

Why does this role exist?

VSHNs is known for the ability to speak directly with an engineer who knows what they' re talking about, who can understand a customer’s challenges and figure out how we can solve them. Non-technical sales people can’t do that. Sales asking random engineers for help doesn’t create the needed sense of ownership.

We need people who can take the time to work directly with sales and the customer to figure out what the customer needs and provide them with a solution that meets their needs and aligns with VSHN’s strategy.

Key Responsibilities

Coordinate with other Solution Architects, Inside Sales and Key Accounting (SM, CSM) on who is handling which "Requirement Engineering" tickets. Pull tickets from the backlog, own the request from start to finish, and perform the following tasks as needed.

See Requirements Engineering and Solution Design Process.
Requirements Engineering

  • Meet with (potential) customer, understand and document their business, challenges, requirements and constraints - technical and business.

  • Clarify budget and timeline of iterations to deliver possible solutions.

Solution Design

  • Coordinate with Products (PM, PO) and other Solution Architects and Engineers.

  • Create and document Solution Design, including effort estimation and service pricing.

  • Support offering and present Solution to customer, answer technical questions.

Consulting

In all the above, do consulting as useful to help the customer understand their challenges and what they need, while focusing on creating Managed Services later. This might include:

  • Workshops

  • Setting up demo instances of VSHN Products (for example APPUiO instances, CI/CD pipeline, etc.).

  • Getting their development environment set up and support it.

Key Deliverables

What are the specific things we offer to fulfil our key responsibilities and purpose?

  • Documented requirements per request

  • Documented solution design to be used in the offer

  • Consulting

  • Technical support for the (potential) customer during the whole sales process

  • Internal support during onboarding of the customer

Delegator Responsibilities

  • Make sure that VSHN Strategy is made clear enough.

  • Governance within Customer Solution to support this role.

Dependencies

Solution Team of the Engineer

  • Time for this Role, fulfilling this role has priority over other work in the team.

  • Availability to react and answer to new / updated requests within 1 work day.

Sales

Bring in and create tickets in the backlog for actual customer requests.

VSHN Strategy

Clarity on what we actually want to offer and what not.

VSHN Products

  • Definition of the Solution Framework

  • Product Catalog including feature maturity

Key Resources

  • Issue-type, workflow and backlog in Jira for "Sales Requests"

  • Access to Hubspot and ERP

Mindset, Skills and Capabilities

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

  • Hands-on Setup and Operations experience (could be distributed over all Solution Architects) of the VSHN Product and the used technology

  • Ability to understand and talk about business / economic aspects with the customer and sales

  • Basic understanding of the technologies used in customer Application (for AppOps)

  • Confident in advocating VSHN values, strategies, and solutions, including 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.

Evaluation Criteria

  • Own at least 2 active requests in average.

  • Customer are happy with consulting provided.

  • Engineers can directly work with the documented Solution Design and understand the "why" (Requirements).

  • (Potential) customers get answers and offers within a useful time.

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