Jelle Druyts

As a response to my thinking about the role of the Technical Solutions Architect, Hans Verbeeck makes a good point on his blog on the snobism of Architecture:

It's like everyone needs to be one. Especially the top developers seem to be targeted. If you are a lead developer then you stand a big chance of being labeled an Aspiring Architect by some folks within Microsoft. IMHO, you don't need to be an architect to be architecting. I would even say that probably most of the good architectural work comes from Lead Developers who have a deep deep udnerstanding of what software is all about.

The architect title is perhaps so over-used that it's lost its meaning, and I think that's the source of a lot of confusion and opportunism. I've always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the architect title, but I guess people (including me) need some way of categorizing their qualifications in a name that's well understood.

Clearly, there's something very different about what guys like Don Box and Chris Anderson do with internal frameworks such as WCF and WPF, and what I do as an external consultant on enterprise (business) frameworks. But within the boundaries of terminology that's out there, I positioned myself somewhere in the triangle.

I actually like Hans' image a lot about being positioned outside the triangle - which also puts me more outside the business domain:

So this certainly makes sense to me.

About the snobism and whether or not you should wear the architect title: I forgot about it until now but I think the solution already exists: the Microsoft Certified Architect Program should be - or become, as it's still in its early stages - the governing instance that hands out the "architect" credentials (in the Microsoft-space anyway). While a regular Microsoft certification - in my opinion - doesn't say that much about the real-life experience or qualifications of someone, this architecture certification is backed by a Review Board and a pretty heavy qualification process. This should make the certification much more credible...

But in the end, I think you'll always have to prove your worth on the dance-floor, if you know what I mean. So I'll just keep doing my moves and let's keep this party rolling