What does your Architect do?
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I'm curious what everyone's company considers the role of the software architect. In my company the architect is involved in all phases of development life-cycle, I think that's pretty standard across the board. But as far as development goes where I work they are the primary coders as well as designing the whole system. I have a few colleagues at other comanies that say their architects hardly do any coding at all. Is this the norm in the industry today?
- Arcond
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I'm curious what everyone's company considers the role of the software architect. In my company the architect is involved in all phases of development life-cycle, I think that's pretty standard across the board. But as far as development goes where I work they are the primary coders as well as designing the whole system. I have a few colleagues at other comanies that say their architects hardly do any coding at all. Is this the norm in the industry today?
- Arcond
Arcond wrote:
say their architects hardly do any coding at al
I wish I knew. I know we have some around here somewhere. I and others where I work do the designing, meeting with the customer, and the documentation. I'm not sure when that term was invented, and for what reason.
MrPlankton
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I'm curious what everyone's company considers the role of the software architect. In my company the architect is involved in all phases of development life-cycle, I think that's pretty standard across the board. But as far as development goes where I work they are the primary coders as well as designing the whole system. I have a few colleagues at other comanies that say their architects hardly do any coding at all. Is this the norm in the industry today?
- Arcond
Arcond wrote:
everyone's company considers the role of the software architect
Don't have them here :jig:
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I'm curious what everyone's company considers the role of the software architect. In my company the architect is involved in all phases of development life-cycle, I think that's pretty standard across the board. But as far as development goes where I work they are the primary coders as well as designing the whole system. I have a few colleagues at other comanies that say their architects hardly do any coding at all. Is this the norm in the industry today?
- Arcond
At most places I've been, that's just a title they give people when they run out of other titles. It's become a way to "promote" people past Sr. Software Engineer. (And the latter tends to get clogged up with management ass kissers who aren't really Sr. Software Engineers, but are given the title so they can get more pay.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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I'm curious what everyone's company considers the role of the software architect. In my company the architect is involved in all phases of development life-cycle, I think that's pretty standard across the board. But as far as development goes where I work they are the primary coders as well as designing the whole system. I have a few colleagues at other comanies that say their architects hardly do any coding at all. Is this the norm in the industry today?
- Arcond
Our architect is an arbiter between the CTO and I.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
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I'm curious what everyone's company considers the role of the software architect. In my company the architect is involved in all phases of development life-cycle, I think that's pretty standard across the board. But as far as development goes where I work they are the primary coders as well as designing the whole system. I have a few colleagues at other comanies that say their architects hardly do any coding at all. Is this the norm in the industry today?
- Arcond
Architects don't build things; they only design them. However, they do need to know how to build things; which techniques will work and which won't. As I'm responsible for complete life-cycle here I do the design, but I wouldn't call myself the architect. In my opinion you would only have an achitect in a shop that's big enough to have someone who does only the design. A senior person who does design and development would be a senior developer.
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I'm curious what everyone's company considers the role of the software architect. In my company the architect is involved in all phases of development life-cycle, I think that's pretty standard across the board. But as far as development goes where I work they are the primary coders as well as designing the whole system. I have a few colleagues at other comanies that say their architects hardly do any coding at all. Is this the norm in the industry today?
- Arcond
It depends on what type of architect you are referring to - Solution Architects typically focus on design using technologies while an Architect might design independent of the underlying technology. Enterprise Architects tend to work more during the planning phases of larger projects and often don’t get involved in technology - although I don’t see how some solutions can be designed without technology in mind. Digressing a little - ideally, architects should also be developers - be it active or past developers. There’s no way, I believe, anyone can effective design solutions without knowing about the technologies that developers use to implement them. I have participated in projects where the EA’s started waving their hands, saying that a certain area is abstract and implementation details are left to developers - those are also the same projects that outright failed, got cancelled, or were very late.
Erik Westermann - wWorkflow.net
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I'm curious what everyone's company considers the role of the software architect. In my company the architect is involved in all phases of development life-cycle, I think that's pretty standard across the board. But as far as development goes where I work they are the primary coders as well as designing the whole system. I have a few colleagues at other comanies that say their architects hardly do any coding at all. Is this the norm in the industry today?
- Arcond
I guess I come closest to the role of "architect" at our place - even though I *DO* a lot of coding at core components. In my understanding, the role of an architect is to bundle and direct development: making sure that the different projects active at a company or division work together, identify overlaps, and handle dependencies, decide which ideas are dead ends and which ones are giants shoulders to stand on. In other words, figuring out the main road, and stringing things together. This means project management, haggling with both management and developers, and a deep distrust for astronauts.
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist -
I'm curious what everyone's company considers the role of the software architect. In my company the architect is involved in all phases of development life-cycle, I think that's pretty standard across the board. But as far as development goes where I work they are the primary coders as well as designing the whole system. I have a few colleagues at other comanies that say their architects hardly do any coding at all. Is this the norm in the industry today?
- Arcond
Well, I am the architect where I work. I am pretty much THE senior developer, designing high level application architecture, planning domain objects, making platform choices (i.e. Making the decision to move to ADO.NET Entity Framework when its released), learning new architectural possabilities, overseeing architectural changes to existing code, implementing database schemas and schema changes, optimizing SQL Server queries and tuning indexes, planning hardware upgrades and some network infrastructure for the entire system (database, application, and web servers), etc. I also code plenty, writing business objects, WCF services, ASP.NET pages and controls, etc. On top of all that, I also mentor the other developers, teach CSS and web standards conformance to developers and graphic designers, and when I manage to find some free time, I learn new technologies (currently investigating advanced WCF topics and learning Entity Framework for its eventual injection into our common architecture, replacing our existing DAL). Yes, Architects DO work. ;)