Role: Architect |
This role is responsible for the software architecture, which includes the key technical decisions that constrain the overall design and implementation for the project.
Role Sets: Roles
Relationships
Additionally Performs: Design the Solution Plan the Project Manage Iteration Plan Iteration | Modifies: Architectural Proof-of-Concept Architecture Design
Main Description
This role performs technical leadership or co-ordination of the system, with overall responsibility for driving the major technical decisions, expressed in the architecture. This typically includes identifying and documenting the architecturally significant aspects of the system, including requirements, design, implementation, and deployment "views" of the system. This role is also responsible for providing rationale for these decisions, balancing the concerns of the various stakeholders, driving down technical risks, and ensuring that decisions are effectively communicated, validated, and adhered to. This role is also closely involved in organising the team around the architecture, working closely with the Project Manager in the staffing and planning of the project.
Staffing
Skills | People performing this role must be well-rounded, posses maturity, vision, and a depth of experience that allows for grasping issues quickly and making educated, critical judgment in the absence of complete information. More specifically, the person must combine these skills: Experience in both the problem domain, through a thorough understanding of the requirements, and the software engineering domain, through active participation in software development. If there is a team, these qualities can be spread across the team members, but at least one person must provide the global vision for the project. Leadership in order to drive the technical effort across the various teams, and to make critical decisions under pressure and make those decisions stick. To be effective, this role and the Architect must have the authority to make technical decisions. Communication to earn trust, to persuade, to motivate, and to mentor. This role cannot lead by decree, only by the consent of the rest of the project. In order to be effective, the person must earn the respect of the project team, the Project Manager, the customer, and the user community, as well as the management team. Goal-oriented and Pro-active with a relentless focus on results. This role is the technical driving force behind the project, not a visionary or dreamer. The career of a successful Architect is a long series of sub-optimal decisions made in uncertainty and under pressure. Only those who can focus on doing what needs to be done will be successful in this environment of the project. From an expertise standpoint, the software architect also needs to encompass design and implementation abilities. However, from the designing perspective, the architect: tends to be a generalist rather than a specialist, knowing many technologies at a high level rather than a few technologies at the detail level makes broader technical decisions, and therefore broad knowledge and experience, as well as communication and leadership skills, are key. "The ideal architect should be a person of letters, a mathematician, familiar with historical studies, a diligent student of philosophy, acquainted with music, not ignorant of medicine, learned in the responses of jurisconsults, familiar with astronomy and astronomical calculations." - Vitruvius, circa 25 BC
Assignment Approaches | This role should be engaged in the project from start to finish. For smaller projects, a single person may act as both as this role and Project Manager. However, if at all possible, it is better to have these roles performed by separate people, in order to ensure that time pressure on one role doesn't cause the other role to be neglected. If this approach is adopted, both individuals must make sure that they work closely together. If the project is large enough to warrant an architecture team, the goal is to have a good mix of talents, covering a wide spectrum of experience and sharing a common understanding of software engineering process. The architecture team need not be a committee of representatives from various teams, domains or contractors. Software architecture is a full-time function, with staff permanently dedicated to it.
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