Architect or Specialist?
If you look at the business cards in IT nowadays, you might think that being an ‘architect’ is more a fashion statement than a function description, because everybody is one. Well, at least everybody promotes himself as such. The question is whether we all really are, or that we as an IT community aren’t really clear on the definition yet?I think we are confusing the term ‘architect’, with that of a ‘specialist’. Though these denominations are closely related, especially in IT, they are not quite the same.
A specialist is somebody who is well versed on a certain subject. This can be anything ranging from server administration, to network technologies, to software programming. It might even be a certain combination of things like programming certain network components. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the specialist knows everything there is to know on that subject and if you have a problem or want something done in that particular field of expertise, the specialist will give you the best solution.
And that is the big difference between a specialist and an architect. The specialist will provide you with the best technical solution. The architect on the other hand will give you the best solution given your particular circumstance. Being able to understand what is required now and say three to four years from now and to translate that into a concrete IT solution, is what makes an architect. This means that as an architect, you also have to define those requirments that the business can not. You have to identify all the implicit qualities like levels of security, availability, continuity and the total lifecycle and then define an IT architecture that provides these qualitities within the given budget.
Tags: architecture profession