Architect is an interesting role and most people in the IT want to do this role while knowing the least about the role.
The term “architect” didn’t enter popular usage to describe a software architect until the late 1990s. This was ridiculed as an overblown, fancy and misappropriation from a “real” architecture field.
Major confusion has been around the key deliverables from an architect. We often say “blueprints,” but that’s another metaphor borrowed from the original field, and of course we don’t make actual blueprints.
Decades later, the practice and the art of the architect in technology varies dramatically not only from one company to the next, but also from one department and one practitioner to the next.
However, if we dig deep in the history, we start to see how a good IT architect possesses the skills that we seek from a field architect.
The first architect of record is a fellow named Vitruvius, who worked as a civil engineer in Rome in the first century BC. Everyone who goes to architecture school learns his work. Vitruvius is the author of de Architectura, known today as ‘Ten Books on Architecture’, where he described that any architecture must demonstrate three requirements:
Firmitas – It must be solid, firm.
Utilitas – It must be useful, have utility.
Venustas – It must be beautiful or “delightful.”
If we compare IT architecture, we inherit the similar principles for an architecture.
Firm – Architected to run for many years. Maintainable and scalable.
Utility – Understand the real purpose of the system to solve the business problem.
Delightful – Simple and elegant, take care of separation of concerns.
Vitruvuis stated that an architect must concern himself with and become educated in several diverse fields of study, such that they find their way into the work. He outlines them :
- Skill in manual labor as well as in theory
- Proclivity and desire for continuous learning
- A dexterity with tools
- An understanding of optics—how the light gets in
- History, such that you can emphasize and not misinterpret signs of cultural significance
- A strong understanding of philosophy, in order to practice abstract thinking as well as honesty and courtesy
- Physics, to help make things sturdy
- Art, music, theater, drawing, painting, and poetry, to help make things beautiful and well suited to their human purposes
- Math
- Medicine
- Astronomy
Well, luckily we don’t expect an IT architect possess all these skills, but, we expect an architect to have ‘T-shaped’ skills i.e. having the breadth of knowledge and experience with deep understanding of one or more areas.
Thinking Space 