What is a software architect and what are his main functions?
In modern software development, a tremendous amount of knowledge, effort, and experience is required to build a reliable, innovative , and long-lasting product that customers want to use. This includes technology , process, and business knowledge.
While we should strive to be generalists and understand every aspect, we need specialists to do the more complex work to be able to predict aspects such as timeliness and quality. This is the focus of the software architect.
In this article, we explain who this professional is and what their main functions are in companies.
What is software architecture?
Defining software architecture succinctly is no easy task because it is a field in constant flux—it changes every year as new technologies become available at an ever-increasing pace. Add cloud vendor offerings to the already staggering amount of variation and choice between platforms, languages, frameworks, libraries, paradigms, patterns, and tools, and the challenge increases exponentially.
System architecture, however, only describes the main components, relationship structures of a system, and how they interact with one another. Several contributing factors to these include business strategy, quality attributes, human dynamics, design, and IT environment.
Who is a software architect?
A software architect is a programmer or developer who determines the processes and technologies that the development team should use. He or she also solves coding problems and collaborates with other experts to produce high-performance software systems. In other words, his or her main role is to find structured software solutions that align with the company’s goals and technological needs.
A software architect needs to have technical skills, but also good social skills. Specifically, here is a list of factors that a software architect should be able to handle.
Customer interaction
A software architect needs to interact with clients, product managers, and developers to visualize, model, and provide initial mockups and designs that can be built. This role may also include meeting with potential or current clients.
Code review
A software architect has to constantly review code to ensure design quality, avoid complexity, advocate for clarity, and do so with the team. This often requires hands-on work in terms of prototyping, contributing code, or evaluating technologies.
Constant collaboration
The role of a software architect involves working collaboratively with a degree of humility and providing mentorship as needed. This collaboration also allows the architect to familiarize themselves with the skills and interests of the team and share their knowledge with the rest of the team. Humility is required to ensure that the entire team is heard, as they may have more specific expertise or knowledge for the problem at hand.
What characteristics do companies require from a software architect?
Considering all the main aspects that the role of a software architect includes, it is obvious that this person must have knowledge in programming, management, psychology, communication and even finance. So, what are the main skills and qualities that this specialist must have?
Problem solving
Problem-solving ability is the most major attribute of an architect. The broader and deeper the range of those problems, the more experienced the architect will be. Some architects specialize in networking issues, physical deployments, or business domain decomposition and “big picture” architecture, while others integrate with existing systems or even all of the above.
But regardless of the focus, an architect’s primary task is to determine a good solution to a problem. It’s not to provide information, coordinate with others, or do research—it’s to describe the solution. An architect’s output is a description or a roadmap telling how to solve a problem.
Holistic thinking
An architect needs to understand a problem holistically in order to deliver a good solution. Problems have business impact, even though they are positioned as purely technical in nature. So an architect needs to understand the context of a problem before they can deliver a good solution. This requires engaging people, often with information they may not necessarily realize that they have, much less need.
A good architect must be a good listener and relentless in tracking down not just problems, but also “why” something is a problem or an opportunity. Since the non-technical side of the business may have little insight into the business impact of a technical decision, it is on them to assess and communicate those impacts to choose a good solution.
Creative use of technology
Not all good architecture is new. In fact, a solid, proven solution to a common, standard technical problem is almost always better overall (in terms of development and maintenance costs) than a “creative” approach that is different in its own right.
Architects in established companies have the additional challenge of being completely familiar with their existing systems. This can naturally bias them towards an evolutionary approach. In their case, the need for creativity often involves the ability to see their current business in a new light; in particular, applying new techniques to current problems and opportunities, where these approaches provide genuine business or technical value.
Decision-making
The capacity to determine which solution is best suited to a particular business or technological problem—even if that proposal is rejected—is the distinguishing feature of a software architect. In actuality, an architectural function involves taking into account a particular choice’s cost, viability, preferences, and skill levels. When two options are technically equivalent, this can help in making an informed decision.
