<story><title>Software architects should be involved in earliest system engineering activities</title><url>https://insights.sei.cmu.edu/sei_blog/2019/08/why-software-architects-must-be-involved-in-the-earliest-systems-engineering-activities.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>glenjamin</author><text>Software Architecture is vitally important to the long term success of a software system.&lt;p&gt;Software Architects are not the only way to get software architecture. They may even be the worst way.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Software Architects who Code&amp;quot; often do not suffer from this issue, depending on how much they actually get involved in production software and operations. However I would struggle to define a meaninful difference between a &amp;quot;Software Architect who Codes&amp;quot; and a sufficiently &amp;quot;Senior Software Developer&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ztjio</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a Software Architect who made a progressive move to that role after being a Sr. Software Engineer for almost a decade. I see the distinction as pretty simple. We do the same things, but, we specialize in terms of time spent and breadth of awareness and contact in the business.&lt;p&gt;As far as skills go I expect to maintain my coding skills and as far as what I know more about than other SE&amp;#x27;s is not about skill as much as it is about practicality of time spent. We need the devs to be writing code&amp;#x2F;implementing every day and the architects spend more time on the, well, architecture as well as business interfacing and planning side.&lt;p&gt;So that&amp;#x27;s basically it, the difference is where we spend our time and focus. It&amp;#x27;s more about roles and needs of the group than about the skill set. At least, that&amp;#x27;s what I&amp;#x27;d hope. Anyone thinking they are a Senior level engineer who can&amp;#x27;t understand the concepts of software architecture needs to rethink their position and maybe broaden their skill set a bit, imho.</text></comment>
<story><title>Software architects should be involved in earliest system engineering activities</title><url>https://insights.sei.cmu.edu/sei_blog/2019/08/why-software-architects-must-be-involved-in-the-earliest-systems-engineering-activities.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>glenjamin</author><text>Software Architecture is vitally important to the long term success of a software system.&lt;p&gt;Software Architects are not the only way to get software architecture. They may even be the worst way.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Software Architects who Code&amp;quot; often do not suffer from this issue, depending on how much they actually get involved in production software and operations. However I would struggle to define a meaninful difference between a &amp;quot;Software Architect who Codes&amp;quot; and a sufficiently &amp;quot;Senior Software Developer&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>malandrew</author><text>Could not agree more about coding. These days I am doing more architecting and code reviews with coding as time permits and the less coding I do the less I’m able to stay ahead of pathologies developing in the codebase as the codebase scales. Right now I’m trying to get the engineers I lead to be more self sufficient on code reviews among themselves and self directed in terms of what to do next so I can spend enough time coding. It’s hard to do if the team is growing and the number of inbounds demanding your attention grows.</text></comment>