Architecture
Architect Responsibilities
Whilst trying to identify some of the gaps in my own experience, I stumbled across coding the architecture.
It has some very useful articles on software architects and what they should be doing, as well as not doing! The most helpful for me personally was an article describing the role profile as I have worked with several architects over the years, and their daily duties varied markedly. As well as self-assessment, I think the published matrix could also be very useful whilst interviewing candidates – the author has attempted to assign a degree of responsibility to each aspect. For me, it’s not always cut and dried exactly who is contributing what to a particular project, be it a senior developer or an architect – it depends very much upon an individual’s desire to contribute as well as their particular skill-set.
In general, I was very impressed with the tone of coding the architecture. It is very hands-on and pragmatic in it’s approach, and dispenses with most of the fluff you sometimes hear from senior guys who haven’t got their hands dirty in a while. From my own experience and the way I have tried to build my own career, I’m of the firm belief that an architect who loses touch with the code base is asking for a fall…