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Architects and Engineers

Yesterday, I had a discussion with a few colleagues about the difference between engineers (or developers) and architects.

There seems to be a thin line between these disciplines. My opinion about this subject is as follows:

Engineers and architects both have different roles and skills. Engineers can create designs and can oversee much of the details that go with it. They are the specialists on a field that can make designs that can be built easily.

Architects are in a different playingfield than engineers. Usually architects are positioned at the beginning of projects, where engineers usually do their job when the project is running for a while. Furthermore, architects should have the following skills, that are not necessarily needed for engineers:

• Good architects have much (at least 10 years) experience in many companies, and in different roles. This way they have a good understanding of different business- and technical issues.
• Architects have a wide technical knowledge, across many different areas. They should not be specialists, but generalists.
• Architects need good communication- and social skills. It's the architects who are supposed to convince the managers and project leaders of their architectures. Furthermore, they need leadership skills to have projects follow the architecture.
• Architects need a helicopter view. They are the ones that need to oversee the consequences of architectures and the changes to it, including the business effects.

This means that there is no such thing as a Java Architect or a Network Architect. These people are engineers. They excel in their specific knowledge area and they use the more general guidelines from the architects.

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