Practical Salesforce Architecture

Chapter 11. The Architect

In the previous chapters we have covered many of the foundational Salesforce technology concepts. Now we will dive into more of the specifics of the role of an architect working with Salesforce. As we touched on in Chapter 5, architect definitely makes the list of commonly misused and confused terms in the world of information technology, and it has no clearer a definition in Salesforce than in any other realm. The distinctions between the different definitions are blurry at best, and just about every one is met with exceptions and objections.

To start the conversation, we will use a very simple definition, and we’ll expand from there. As you’ll see in this chapter, there are many different roles an architect can take in a project, and they can be spread across many different job titles. Some of the most skilled architects I have worked with blended project management, business analysis, user experience, and client relationship skills to deliver complex masterpieces of functionality. I have also met many architects who have gathered diverse hands-on building or development skills throughout their careers. Whether these roles are specified in a job title or distributed across one or several people depends on the scale of the effort. Most of the time, anyone with a perspective of these roles’ goals will decide how much time to spend focusing on each. Many of these concepts only become critical in larger projects, or when you have many teams to coordinate. ...