Chapter One. Introduction

So you want to become a software architect? Or perhaps you are already a software architect, and you want to expand your knowledge of the discipline? This book is about achieving and maintaining success in your software career. It is also about an important new software discipline and technology, software architecture. It is not a book about getting rich in the software business; the advice offered here is aimed at helping the reader achieve professional fulfillment. Although the monetary rewards may be substantial, many people in software architecture are motivated by being continuous technical contributors throughout their careers. In other words, most software architects want to do technically interesting work, no matter how successful and experienced they become. So the goal of this book is to help readers achieve career success as software architects and then to maintain their success.

In this book both heavyweight and lightweight approaches to software architecture are covered. The software architect has many roles: part politician, part technologist, part author, part evangelist, part mentor, part psychologist, and more. At the apex of the software profession, the software architect must understand the viewpoints and techniques of many players in the information technology (IT) business. What many people would consider the bulk of software architecture, the discipline and process of writing specifications, is described, as are those human aspects of the practice that are most challenging to architects, both new and experienced.

So what does a software architect do? A software architect both designs software and guides others in the creation of software. The architect serves both as a mentor and as the person who documents and codifies how tradeoffs are to be made by other software designers and developers. It is common to see the architect serve as a trainer, disciplinarian, and even counselor to other members of the development team.