Context:
An organization of Developers that needs strategic technical direction.
Forces:
Totalitarian control is viewed by most development teams as a draconian measure.
The right information must flow through the right roles.
Solution:
Beyond advising and communicating with Developers, Architects should also participate in implementation.
Resulting Context:
A development organization that perceives buy-in from the guiding architects, an d that can directly avail itself of architectural expertise.
Design Rationale:
The importance of making this pattern explicit arose recently in a project I work with. The architecture team was being assembled across wide geographic boundaries with narrow communication bandwidth between them. Though general architectural responsibilities were identified and the roles were staffed, one group had expectations that architects would also implement code; the other did not.
One manager suggests that, on some projects, architects should focus only on the implementation of a common infrastructure, and that the implementation of non-core code should be left solely to the Developer role.
"It would be convenient if architecture could be defined as any building designed by an architect. But who is an architect? Although the Academie Royale d'Architecture in Paris was founded in 1671, formal architectural schooling did not appear until the nineteenth century. The famous Ecole des Beaux-Arts was founded in 1816; the first English-language school, in London, in 1847; and the first North American university program, at MIT, was established in 1868. Despite the existence of professional schools, for a long time the relationship between schooling and practice remained ambiguous. It is still possible to become an architect without a university degree, and in some countries, such as Switzerland, trained architects have no legal monopoly over construction. This is hardly surprising. For centuries, the difference between master masons, journeymen builders, joiners, dilettantes, gifted amateurs, and architects has been ill defined. The great Renaissance buildings, for example, were designed by a variety of non-architects. Brunelleschi was trained as a goldsmith; Michelango as a sculptor, Leonardo da Vinci as a painter, and Alberti as a lawyer; only Bramante, who was also a painter, had formally studied building. These men are termed architects because, among other things, they created architecture--a tautology that explains nothing." -- [Rybczynski, p. 9].
[Vitruvis] notes: "...[A]rchitects who have aimed at acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority to correspond to their pains, while those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not ths substance. But those who have a thorough knowledge of both, like men armed at all points, have the sooner attained their object and carried authority with them."
Next: Review the Architecture