Role of the Architect

A Software Architect provides a solution that the technical team can create and design for the entire application. A software architect should have expertise in the following areas −

Design Expertise

• Expert in software design, including diverse methods and approaches such as object-oriented design, event-driven design, etc.

• Lead the development team and coordinate the development efforts for the integrity of the design.

• Should be able to review design proposals and tradeoff among themselves.

Domain Expertise

• Expert on the system being developed and plan for software evolution.

• Assist in the requirement investigation process, assuring completeness and consistency.

• Coordinate the definition of domain model for the system being developed.

Technology Expertise

• Expert on available technologies that helps in the implementation of the system.

• Coordinate the selection of programming language, framework, platforms, databases, etc.

Methodological Expertise

• Expert on software development methodologies that may be adopted during SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle).

• Choose the appropriate approaches for development that helps the entire team.

Hidden Role of Software Architect

• Facilitates the technical work among team members and reinforcing the trust relationship in the team.

• Information specialist who shares knowledge and has vast experience.

• Protect the team members from external forces that would distract them and bring less value to the project.

Deliverables of the Architect

• A clear, complete, consistent, and achievable set of functional goals

• A functional description of the system, with at least two layers of decomposition

• A concept for the system

• A design in the form of the system, with at least two layers of decomposition

• A notion of the timing, operator attributes, and the implementation and operation plans

• A document or process which ensures functional decomposition is followed, and the form of interfaces is controlled

• Implementation details (that is, the folder structure of your repo)

• Implementation design decisions (Do you use server side or client side rendering? Relational or non-relational databases?)

• The technologies you choose (Do you use REST or GraphQl for your API? Python with Django or Node with Express for your back end?)

• System design decisions (like is your system a monolith or is it divided into microservices?)

• Infrastructure decisions (Do you host your software on premise or on a cloud provider?)