Software Architect

CHAPTER 1Software Architect Capability Model

Many information technology (IT) and business professionals often fail to provide clear answers to these three fundamental questions: What do software architects do? What artifacts¹ do they deliver? How should architecture skills be assessed, quantified, and vetted?

At a first glance, these sound like easy queries to address. The conventional notion that a software architect fulfills the same duties as a building or landscape architect is utterly incorrect. There is no parallel between these two occupations, because they exercise different practices in distinct fields of expertise. Furthermore, they are commissioned to achieve dissimilar goals.

A software architect is required to perform a vast number of activities, typically handled by more than one professional. So, is it possible to deduce from these tasks what architects actually do or what they deliver?

In the context of this chapter, the simplest answer we offer to such challenging questions is this:

• A software architect does what a specific organization needs—nothing more!

This assertion is deliberately too broad. This concept affirms, however, that a software architect must respond to business and technological requirements of a particular organization. In other words, architecture tasks and deliverables vary from one institution to another. Moreover, while working for different lines of business, architects seldom tackle the same challenges, nor do they always provide ...