Simon Thorneycroft and Jonathan Hodgson

Firstly, at IBM we had an architect board in the Software Group, which helped me form a network. It took me a while to understand the importance of a network. Being a New Englander, I tend to be a little taciturn and by myself. You should never underestimate the importance of a social network. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know what someone may say to you that can push the reset button in your brain and make you think differently.

Secondly, as a software architect, never stop coding. I write code. It's not good or particularly deep code, but I do code. A lot of it is educational and related to my spare-time activities. For example, recently, I've been working on a portal that connects my family using TikiWiki and PHP. I installed the products, but they didn't work for me right out of the box. So, I had to go in and hack them. It was cool. Another example is the nursery school that my daughter attends. They asked me to set up a Web site using [Microsoft] FrontPage, which was another learning experience.

Thirdly, communication skills matter. They really do. It's really important to understand how to write well and how to present well.

Finally, the most important thing is to connect with customers. Spend as much time as possible with them. Learn what they are trying to do, and look at what works and what doesn't. Help them use your products. There's no substitute for spending time with customers and helping them solve problems. Doing this, we often learned that customers used things in ways that we never dreamed they would. We also came up with amazing new ideas.