When being part of an enterprise, you will meet different architects on any given day. The first one introduces itself as a solution architect, the other calls itself the enterprise architect, and they both mention a domain architect. It might feel like different names for the same thing, and perhaps even a bigger question, do we even need all of these different architects? Should the team not be able to make all of these architectural decisions by themselves?
Do we need architects anyway?
Looking at the current technological and organizational paradigm, we can only recognize the world is massively different from 10 or 20 years ago. We live in a world where we can instantly make use of infrastructure via cloud providers. Using common software, functionalities can be purchased and integrated with the click of a button and the availability of a credit card.
Gone are the days of creating large project plans and business cases. No need to negotiate the proposed solution for any given problem with the budget holder. No long debates with other engineers about the envisioned solution. Great for our agility, but it also has consequences.
Value-stream teams have been given more autonomy and possibilities to select, purchase and integrate hardware and software. Albeit via cloud providers where you can autoscale your infrastructure, or via Software-as-a-Service providers who offer you functionality out of the box. Gone are the days of making well-thought documents who are reviewed and tested by colleagues in the organization.
Clearly this benefits the speed of delivery and flexibility in choosing solutions. Consequently, however, it requires more maturity from a team. The solution proposed and decisions made not only have to fit the context of the team, but as well as the organization. The complexity and pressure to guard consistency and best interest for the organization, as a whole, now relies on the value-stream teams. The tension of choosing between different options and stakeholders now solely falls on the burden of the team.
The architect function is key in getting to conscious decisions that are beneficial for the customers and the organization as a whole. Either by limiting the number of options that are available for a team, or by refining and improving the reasoning and acceptance of trade-offs between proposed solutions.