What is software architecture? What is the role of a software architect? How do you define software architecture? How do you share software architecture? How do you deliver software architecture?

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Re: Contract architects

Comment from Rob Billington on 13 January 2007 11:37:45 GMT #
It seems natural to me that somewhere between the cleaner and the CEO, most organisations have a comfort level at which they stop using contractors.  Presumably because of factors such as:

  • The amount of business knowledge required to be effective.  I'm currently working on a SOA project, where the architects need to take into account (overly) complex dependencies between business processes and (144+) IT systems when making decisions. This knowledge takes time to build, so the permie architect offers the benefit of at least keeping the knowledge in-house.
  • Accountability for long-term and hard-to-reverse decisions.  Assuming that the role of the architect is to make these decisions, as an organisation it would be preferable to have a degree of assurance the the architect will still be around (i.e. permie) or could potentially be recalled (via a consultancy with a reputation to protect) and not just ride off into the night.
  • The importance of building effective working relationships with other teams and individuals within the organisation - especially where the architecture has potential implications for those teams.  This can take time to get to know the politics and ways of working of the individuals (as well as the systems) that you need to interface with.
Clearly, it'll depend on the type of architect you're looking for (application, system, enterprise, data, information...) but I don't find it surprising that pluggability is considered lower that that of designers and developers.
 

Re: Contract architects

Comment from Anonymous on 02 September 2010 20:27:37 BST #

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Software architecture for developers