Software architect

A software architect is a software expert who makes high-level design choices and dictates technical standards, including software coding standards, tools, and platforms. The leading expert is referred to as the chief architect.

History

The software architect concept began to take hold when object-oriented programming (OOP) was coming into more widespread use (in the late 1990s and early years of the 21st century). OOP allowed ever-larger and more complex applications to be built, which in turn required increased high-level application and system oversight.

Responsibilities

The main responsibilities of a software architect include:

Limit choices available during development by

choosing a standard way of pursuing application development
creating, defining, or choosing an application framework for the application

Recognize potential reuse in the organization or in the application by

observing and understanding the broader system environment
creating the component design
having knowledge of other applications in the organization

Subdivide a complex application, during the design phase, into smaller, more manageable pieces
Grasp the functions of each component within the application
Understand the interactions and dependencies among components
Communicate these concepts to developers

In order to perform these responsibilities effectively, software architects often use tools or standardized model and symbol sets such as Unified Modeling Language(UML) and OOP to represent systems or develop artifacts. UML has become an important tool for software architects to use in communicating the overall system design to developers and other team members, comparable to the drawings made by building architects.

Duties

The role of software architect generally has certain common traits:

Architects make high-level design choices much more often than low-level choices. In addition, the architect may sometimes dictate technical standards, including coding standards, tools, or platforms.

Software architects may also be engaged in the design of the architecture of the hardware environment, or may focus entirely on the design methodology of the code.

Architects can use various software architectural models that specialize in communicating architecture.

Other types of IT-related architects

The enterprise architect handles the interaction between the business and IT sides of an organization and is principally involved with determining the AS-IS and TO-BE states from a business and IT process perspective. Unfortunately^{Dubious - discuss.} many organizations are bundling the software architect duties within the role of enterprise architecture. This is primarily done as an effort to "up-sell" the role of a software architect and/or to merge two disparate business-related disciplines to avoid overhead.

An application architect works with a single software application.

Other similar titles in use, but without consensus on their exact meaning, include:

Solution architect, which may refer to a person directly involved in advancing a particular business solution needing interactions between multiple applications. May also refer to an application architect.
System architect (singular), which is often used as a synonym for application architect. However, if one subscribes to Systems theory and the idea that an enterprise can be a system, then System Architect could also mean Enterprise Architect.
Systems architect (plural), which is often used as a synonym for enterprise architect or solution architect.

The table below indicates many of the differences between various kinds of software architects:

Architect type	Strategic thinking	System interactions	Communication	Design
enterprise architect	across projects	highly abstracted	across organization	minimal, high level
solutions architect	focused on solution	very detailed	multiple teams	detailed
application architect	component re-use, maintainability	centered on single application	single project	very detailed

In the software industry, as the table above suggests, the various versions of architect do not always have the same goals.^[1]

References

↑ Anecdote about an interaction between Solution and Enterprise Architect

External links

International Association of Software Architects (IASA)

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