In regards to what Todd Little said, most companies, through their outsourcing of high skill IT functions to big 5/4/3 consulting companies and offshoring of the coding activities to Indian (and other) consulting companies, are in dire need of all forms of IT skill sets, not just architects. The C?O positions have sold you all out to cut a few bucks off the bottom line. The people that are left are often the b*llsh*t artists that know all the buzzwords, and the glorified middle managers that are left to fill the architect positions (which used to be highly skilled positions).

That's one of the reasons I've been so successful as an application/system/network/data/security architect....I work for a consulting company. Eventually, all the C?Os realize they need help and call us. :)

Pure Software Architecture is one thing, Application Architecture is another. I wonder if the original authors comments were intended to also include Network Architects, Infrastructure Architects, Security Architects, Solution Architects, Operational Architects, Data Architects, Systems Architects, Enterprise Architects, Information Architects or Integration Architects.... and all the other architectural skills that may be required to successfully deliver large complex projects to clients.

I agree with the author. I have recently worked on a major project where the System Architect knew enough buzz words - BPEL, ESB, etc.. and wanted to use everything available for a DB of 200K records which was running on SQL Server.

The company spent $10Million and laid off everyone and sold the company. The architect has a bigger title and better pay.

The rest of us are still peeved. It is time that WE EDUCATE THE MANAGERS THRU WEB OR SPAM.

Interesting story, although what it has to do with architecture is totally beyond me. It sounds like you simply got out sold by some hucksters that knew how to catch and hold the customers attention. Welcome to the real world.

It seems the real issue here is what constitutes a "software architect"? My experience tells me that in many organizations, a software architect is someone that can dictate standards that must be adhered to. Personally I don't think that is architecture, at least not that main part of architecture. This is especially true when you get into mandating that certain tools, products, etc., are to be used. Maybe that is "systems architecture" but it certainly isn't "application architecture" which is what I think most companies are in dire needs of.

Without going into a long post about architecture, may I suggest readers look at some of the work done by Michael Hammer. Although his focus years ago was on re-engineering, he had a lot of great thoughts on what was basically software architecture.

I personally subscribe to the notion that in application architecture, architecture is the set of functions or features that remains relatively constant over time. Done well it can allow applications to be built that survive changes in requirements, changes in platforms, changes in technology, etc. Done poorly architecture simply becomes standards, functional specifications, or design documents.

So is there an unhealthy "obsession" with the concept of architecture? I believe absolutely not. Is there an unhealthy view of what architecture is and what value it provides to an organization? Absolutely.

Now You did it! Now my boss thinks he doesn't need a good and working software. Now he thinks that INSTEAD he needs more architects to sell powerpoint presentations! ;-)

I agree somewhat that there are a great too many people calling themselves architects that wouldn't know a domain pattern from a transaction script! However, I take a great deal of offense at the broad generalizations that you are making. Software architects serve the same purpose as a building architect, and are just as important. Just as a building architect takes vauge ideas, concepts, and desires from a client and transforms them into a vision, a software architect has to do the same. We often work with the end users, product management, executive management, developers, QA, training, support, marketing, and so forth. We facilitate the process of building a successful product, and we define it in terms that the developers, QA testers, documentation, and customer support teams can consume and understand in the least ambiguous and most cost-effective ways. In order to perform this job, you MUST understand the underlying technologies, know what is possible and what is not, but more importantly, understand the consequences of your decisions. The process of software design, or any design for that matter, is never black and white. There are always trade-offs. In large, complex products, the developers are often ill-equiped to make these decisions.

I take serious offense at your title, because to me a software architect, a truely good one, has to first be a good programmer. Notice I said programmer, not coder. To me a programmer is someone that can devise algorithms to solve problems. A coder is someone that can express that algorithm in a programming language. Often they are one in the same, but many times they are not. A good architect has to have a much broader understanding than a programmer typically, as well as understanding of how to express the concepts of the design.

The audience that an architect deals with varies widely. We have to be able to describe the concepts and the end product before it is built to th customers, to management, and to non-technical audiences. We then have to turn around and explain the same things to a technical audience in much greater detail. We use tools such as UML and ERD (as well as others) to explain these concepts. We have to deal with higher levels of abstraction, such as deployment of the application, affects on performance by using different approaches to application structure, scalability issues, security, etc. We often have to wade through piles of regulatory documents and legal materials if we are working with products that deal with sensitive information (and most do these days). We also build the prototypes to ensure that the risky areas of the design will work correctly. In many cases, we roll up our sleves and develop some parts of the application. Case in point, the product I am building now has a good amount of code in it that I have written, as well as everyone on my team. If we do our jobs right, the result is an unambiguous design that will be easier to build, test, and maintain and with less cost.

No, I disagree with your assumption, and I think you are way off target. I think that you need to re-think your assumptions. The whole software process needs a lot of contributors, and the mix varies widely from one project to another. You, just as the "architects" that you belittle, have missed the mark.

Your rant is against software architects or silver bullet addicts, or competitors in the software space or .... what?

1) Being a software architect is a matter of experience and aptitude. There ARE too many people calling themselves architects who really aren't. But there are many qualified and even superior software development people out there who ARE architects. AND good ones at that.

2) Silver bullet addicts are everywhere! CIOs, programmers, managers, clients. I've got a client who thinks that SOA is the silver bullet that will save his company. I've got a developer that thinks that Ruby or Rails or Groovy is so cool that we need to use it on our current J2EE project. I've had CIOs that think the WebSphere (apparently, the name alone) will save their jobs.

3) Software vendors have been hyping vaporware since I started in the mid-70's. IBM was a major violator back then and they still are!

4) Lazy managers and CIOs who should be doing vision and management, love to tinker at the buzzword level. Just smack em.

5) It sounds like you didn't get your nap today. You rag on about a half dozen subjects and conclude that the life form 'architects' are to blame. You paraphrase "Those that can...do, those that can't...teach." to make it seem that all architects are useless, do nothing white paper architects seeking their next conference at the Moscone Center.

6) I an a Senior Solutions Architect for a national consulting company, and a Director in their Solutions Architecture Chicago office. I began 30 years ago writing assembler on mainframes and mini computers, working in C and C++ and Java on Unix and Windows for nearly 20 years. I've worked on very large projects and very small projects. I do architectural specification, design and J2EE development on a daily basis.

You do working architects a disservice by your article. Sure white paper architects are to be despised. Sure, developers with 2 1/2 years of development are NOT architects, despite what their Monster resume says. Sure, many of the presenters at most of the conferences you might go to today, and a significant majority of the attendees that attend these conferences with "Grand Architectural Poobah" on their badge are NOT architects, but it doesn't mean that much of everything you wrote wasn't just wrong and maybe even mean-spirited.

So take a nap, raise your blood sugar and post a retraction or an apology. Do your karma some good.

Peace Out,

David Tomlinson

I have been reading the list of comments and interestingly enough, I am taking a class on Software Architecture. A point the instructor (a long time Software Architect and Coder) made was that no one questions an architect for a construction project (e.g. building, bridge, etc.), or a mechnical engineering project to the same degree that a software architect is questioned. Perhaps because there is a certain level of rigor and standard that customers and people in general have come to accept when the construction or mechanical architect speaks. People tend to believe that they can live with bad software (some may even expect it to be bad to a certain degree), where as the consequences are far more grave if a bridge collapses or a machine (e.g. a car engine) locks up and becomes inoperable. Perhaps because of the fluid nature of software development people expect too much too fast. Unfortunately, it is thinking like the author of this article that lends into the misconception about Software Architecture. I am not an architect, but I hope to be one day. Coders in the U.S. (if that is all they can do well) are easy to replaced with coders from other countries. A coder must develop a sense of the non-technical aspects (i.e. business goals and strategies, sales, marketing, finance, etc.) of the business to become a better developer. Otherwise, the coder is only cranking out exactly what the user requests (at best), and how many users know exactly what they want? Furthermore, when a developer becomes adept enough at working with business people and can see the big picture from both a technical and business perspect, they eventually become architects (or something very similar). So, with that in mind aren't most technically inclined people striving for what the author of this article disdains so much?

Just my Opinon.

Humm interesting. Why did architect in IT come into being. Or ... better so, why did architect came into being anywhere?

Yes ... a programmer does gets the job done. But, architect takes the image from the user's head and puts it into a form that can not only be coded and perform optimally through the life of the application but also include the morphing of the application.

Further, how would an eterprise be architected by coders?

It is like saying carpenters do the actual work while constructing a home ... what's the need of an architect?

I think, when architecture office and developers work together then ... well things turn out OK.

There has always been an interest in SW architecture - largely because applications that are developed without it usually fail in the long run. You make some valid points; we have all probably encountered architects that contribute little to (or even damage) a project. However there are plenty of excellent architects out there, ensuring that the overall solution is well architected, meets the business requirements and can operate in the target environment.

There are also plenty of developers out there that contribute little to the team, they are dismissive of those that do not grasp the technical details of whatever their specialisation is, are too technology focused and have little or no interest in the actual end users requirements or the business problem that the project is tackling.

A little humility goes a long way - for a project to be successful you need a good sales team, business consultants, developers, architects, test engineers and strong management, and for all of them to respect the contribution of the others - even if they don't understand it.

I am an architect who writes code. An architect who cannot write effective and efficient code is like the building architect who designed my first house. He understood the basics of home building and distributing loads, but he ran the joists thinking he was doing the HVAC guy a favor and instead increased the cost of the house by using glulams and joists 12 inches on center. The HVAC guy ran his ductwork in the crawl space and the attic, not even using the long runs between the joists of the second floor.

Architects need to stay current by actually coding their designs once in while.

Joe's "architect" sounded more like a marketing architect; as they say in Texas "All hat, no cattle".

i do agree that this happens in realworld.

but i came across the people who are perfect architect and they have left coding some years back. But they know if they are shown the design where the problem will come.

i will call an architect as a programmer with view to details and person with more analytical skills

As one of the targets of Joe's spleen-venting rhetoric I can only marvel at his singular lack of knowledge about what "architecture" actually is. His example of a brush with a software salesperson (who patently was not an IT architect) re-inforces the importance for clients understanding the place of the different technologies in their environment, rather than an obsession with buzzwords and techno-babble. I'm not sure why Joe feels so aggrieved - but his unbalanced, inaccurate and narrow minded rant merely presents a perspective that he is where he should be - tucked away from customers in the ivory echelons of the labs in Hursley.

One thing you got right - your "friend", the just graduated seeker of the lime-light, really does need to learn to code! Most of the other hypotheses you propose are immature, uninformed and just plain dumb. My suggestion is that you do some research at The Open Group site: there you will find what an IT Architect is and the intensive requirements to achieve that credential.

One more reply in favor of the author of the article :)

It's a rant after all but the point stands. There are indeed the good Architects, but let me rant about the bad ones for a moment.

These kinds of Architects exist and I've seen them do huge damage to projects. These are the guys who would create the powerpoint slides that define the architecture and then leave the hapless developers to do the rest. The Architect would be unavailable to address any issues that come up during development because of course, he would be making the slides for another project. Most likely the Architect would not have worked hands-on on the technologies involved and this is the biggest problem.

I see a lot of people similarly attracted to SOA nowadays.