Invisible Architects

I was recently discussing with a colleague about Architects in Ivory Towers. He asked me if I thought that went on in the project he was involved with. Rather than taking a wild guess, I asked “do the developers know what you do?”

The answers were a step up from “no”, but nobody really had an idea of what he did. In effect his impact on the project was invisible to the developers. Before I get told off for singling one person out, the same can be applied to me – all too often it looks like I’m doing nothing!

What brought this conversation back to me was a slide from Colin Garlick’s talk at QCon London this year. His slide was simple – the two consumers of Architecture are Business and IT. We have to be seen by both sides to be doing something to help them towards their goals, otherwise we run the risk of being legacy relics. Or worst case, the Business view us as an unnecessary cost and the Developers ignore us as being out of touch or dreaded Ivory Tower architects.

How do we fix this? I don’t know if there’s a simple fix. There are a few things I recommend if you’re Agile.

• Architecture as a standalone team doesn’t work. Developers will think us too distant, and the Business think us too impenetrable.
• We should work near the delivery teams to help with knowledge share (this means conversations with the Business can be overheard by developers)
• We should take part in stand-ups to explain what we’re doing
• We must actively engage with the Business. Otherwise this leads to meetings without Architecture – and this often causes us more pain in the long run!

Any other thoughts on things we can do?