Software architect

A software architect is a software developer expert who makes high-level design choices and tries to enforce technical standards, including software coding standards, tools, and platforms.

History

The software architect concept began to take hold when object-oriented programming or 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.

Duties

The role of software architect generally has certain common traits:

Architects make high-level design choices based on their programming experience. An architect has thought through all the aspects of a software, just like an architect that builds a house. A construction architect knows where the ducts will be, where the electric connections will be and where the wall outlets will be. A design that a common person sees is just the walls and windows but a detailed design that is abstracted from the outsider are also present with the architect. In addition, the architect may sometimes propose 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.

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. Many organizations are bundling the software architect duties within the role of enterprise architecture.

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.
  • Cloud architect (plural), which is a software architect who deepen knowledge on architecting solutions and applications on cloud-based infrastructures.


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
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See also

References
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