The Software Architect Elevator

Part I. Architects

Architects have an exciting but sometimes challenging life in corporate IT. Some managers and technical staff might consider them to be overpaid ivory tower residents who, detached from reality, bestow their thoughts upon the rest of the company with slides and wall-sized posters, while their quest for irrelevant ideals causes missed project timelines.

On the upside, IT architects have become some of the most sought-after IT professionals as traditional enterprises are looking to transform their IT landscape to compete with digital disruptors. Ironically, though, many of the most successful digital companies have a world-class software and systems architecture, but don’t have architects at all.

So, what makes a person an architect, besides that it’s printed on their business card?

What Architects Are Not

Sometimes, it’s easier to describe what something isn’t rather than trying to come up with an exact definition of what it is. In the case of architects, exaggerated expectations can paint a picture of someone who solves intermittent performance problems in the morning and then transforms the enterprise culture in the afternoon. This leads to a scenario in which architects are pulled into several roles that clearly miss the purpose of being an architect:

Senior developer

Developers often feel they need to become an architect as the next step in their career (and their pay grade). However, becoming an architect and a superstar engineer are two different career ...