What do Software Architects Do?

In many software organizations, there are job titles like
"Software Architect". What do Software Architects do? That's a great
question, but there is no general agreement on the answer.

I have a friend who is a "real" architect (the kind that designs and
builds buildings) and he tells me that in his industry they are a bit
upset with our industry's use of the term. It's mostly because
Software Architects don't go through anything like the kind of
training, testing, and certification that building architects do. I
think they have a good point.

A recent article by Joe Winchester in the online edition of Java
Developers Journal entitled, "Those Who Can, Code; Those Who Can't,
Architect" really got my attention. The article begins with this:

"At the moment there seems to be an extremely unhealthy obsession in
software with the concept of architecture. A colleague of mine, a
recent graduate, told me he wished to become a software architect. He
was drawn to the glamour of being able to come up with grandiose ideas
- sweeping generalized designs, creating presentations to audiences of
acronym addicts, writing esoteric academic papers, speaking at
conferences attended by headless engineers on company expense accounts
hungrily seeking out this year's grail, and creating e-mails with huge
cc lists from people whose signature footer is more interesting than
the content. I tried to re-orient him into actually doing some coding,
to join a team that has a good product and keen users both of whom are
pushing requirements forward, to no avail. Somehow the lure of being
an architecture astronaut was too strong and I lost him to the dark
side."

Of course, there's a "Software Architect" article in Wikipedia, so I
checked it out. The job description seemed to have a lot to do with
working with stakeholders, getting user requirements, doing cost/benefit
analysis, generating acceptance test requirements, and "generating
products such as sketches, formal diagrams, executable models, an
early user's manual, and prototypes." Except for maybe prototypes,
that doesn't sound like much codin' to me! Where is the need to
actually understand programming?

Winchester continues: "Meanwhile, the architects seem invincible
to failure and rise within the ranks of their organizations, ordering
fresh business cards each year with the words 'architect,' 'senior'
or, for the power blowhards, 'distinguished' in the title. They are
drawn to the tar pit of attending and creating presentations, or
joining conference calls with fellow architects who showboat their
knowledge of obscure standards specifications or bleeding-edge
research projects."

I found that there's an organization called the "Worldwide Institute
of Software Architects (WWISA)". Ironically, the graphic on their web
site's home page illustrates that they do in fact consider themselves
architects in the same sense as the kind who build buildings.

Winchester concludes: "When confronted by such people, recant the
following mantra:

Code ships,
code runs,
code helps users,
get their job done.

Remind any architects in your path that presentation charts, e-mails,
project plans, line-items spreadsheets and so forth, are all there to
help the code ship on time and to spec. The goal of everyone on a
project should be to spend as little time as possible on tasks that
distract from the job of creating quality, tested, and shippable
code. Please architects, please understand this, respect this, and
quietly stay out of the way of those good folk who prefer to spend
their day working with an IDE writing code rather than composing
e-mails."

J.A.W.