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Published on October 9, 2007

The chance has been developed as part of plans by the Office of Computer Clustering Promotion (CCP) to promote the development of people in the Thai software industry, to shift from being only software programmers to become architects of entire software systems.

CCP, which is under the National Science and Technology Development Agency, initiated the idea to set up IASA Thailand Chapter to develop workers in the Thai software industry into software architects.

Set up last month, the organisation was formed as part of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA), a worldwide organisation overseeing improvement of the quality of the software-architecture industry. The link with IASA will allow the Thailand Chapter to utilise IASA's resources for local development while creating worldwide networking with IASA's 50 other country members for the development of the software-architect profession.

CCP's director Dr Smith Suksmith, who is also secretary of IASA Thailand Chapter, said to strengthen the country's software industry the software-architect profession was required as it would move the country from program coding into the design and development of whole software systems.

"In the past we had only a few people who could oversee an entire software-development project. To make the country move forward we must train people who can do such tasks," Dr Smith said.

Like construction architects, architects of software systems have to know the complete process of software development. Not only will they have to understand software-engineering architecture, they have to know infrastructure architecture as well as business-process architecture so they can put the three pieces together to design a whole software system that really can work, Dr Smith said.

The Thailand Chapter will be a central organisation to help local software people use their capabilities to become architects. Training will be provided while technology and best practises will be transferred to local software developers.

Dr Smith said apart from supporting various tasks, the chapter would also offer standard certification to local software architects.

There are three levels in the software-architect profession. The first level, called aspiring software architect, is for local software developers who have been working on software development for two to three years. This group will be a foundation to further develop into professional software architects.

Before achieving the second level of professional architect, aspiring software architects will be trained and have to pass certification processes set by the chapter's committee.

The third level, Dr Smith said, was master architect. This level is reserved for qualified people who have been working in the area for over six years.

"Those who pass all criteria set by the committee will receive IASA certification to guarantee their capabilities," Dr Smith said.

All the certification process and criteria will be developed by the Thailand Chapter's committee itself, but to make the certification process reach IASA standards, the committee will adopt certification guidelines developed by IASA as a framework.

The committee comprises 12 recognised software experts from the government sector, universities and private companies.

NSTDA's assistant director Rom Hiranpreuk, who is also the president of IASA Thailand Chapter, said the chapter hoped to help train 1 per cent of the total 40,000 software people in Thailand into software architects.

"In the past we've never had formal training to create software architects. The formation of the chapter will be a starting point to provide training and push local software people into more and more software-architect roles," Rom said.  

He added that as being a software architect required several skills, and those skills had never been taught in universities, the chapter would pool resources from IASA to train local people.

There are 10 skills - leadership, mentorship, business knowledge, presentation skills, communication skills, technical skills, marketing skills, coaching skills, office politics skills and entrepreneurship - needed to become a software architect under the IASA framework. Dr Smith added that the formation of the Thailand Chapter would be a key mechanism to make the local software industry stronger and bring local software development to the next level of system design.

"It's necessary that we build software-architectural skills for local people so we can achieve higher levels of software development tasks and this will increase competitiveness in software development for the country," Dr Smith said.

Apart from strengthening the local software industry, he also hopes the chapter will eventually develop to become a professional association for the software-architect career, developing a career path for local software people while conducting checks and balances to control the quality standards among the professionals.

IASA Thailand Chapter was formed as a club and it plans to raise its status to that of an association within one year.

Pongpen Sutharoj

The Nation