12 Essential Soft Skills for Software Architects

Thursday, 3:15 PM EST - DEL SOL II

This session will focus on the soft skills that are needed by software architects and pretty much any technical person. One of the chief things that changes when you go from being a tech lead to an architect is the need for soft skills. For many architects, it’s not the technology related areas that give you problems, but people related areas – at least this was the case for case for me.

Come to this session if you want to learn some tricks and tips for how to better interact others – especially executives.

About Dave Hendricksen

Dave Hendricksen

Dave is a senior architect for Thomson Reuters and has worked for Thomson Reuters for over 20 years where his focus is on architecting and delivering enterprise hybrid big data systems.

Dave has written two books with Addison-Wesley, and is currently working on a third:


  • 12 Essential Skills for Software Architects – this book focuses on the soft skills needed by software architects, and has also been translated to Chinese.

  • 12 More Essential Skills for Software Architects – this book focuses on the day to day technical skills needed by software architects.

  • (In Progress) Enterprise Big Data – this book focuses on how to architect and build enterprise big data systems.


    • Dave is also the head coach for the Eagan High School FIRST Robotics program with over 150 students and over 60 mentors. Dave also likes to build things like trebuchets, go carts, and rain barrel watering systems.

    More About Dave »