These 7 Mistakes Undermine Most Software Architects - Are You Making Any of Them?

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Introduction

The role of an IT architect is to create the technical vision and overall blueprint for a system. Depending on the architect's specific role (software architect, solutions architect, technical architect, and so forth) and the complexity of the system, the architect may be zooming in or zooming out of the system to different degrees.

In other words, in one case, the architect may dive deeper into the system's internals while in another, go broader into the overarching interplay between different system components and the system's overall interaction with its environment.

In fact, there is a whole story behind the existence of the IT Architect role.

Whatever the case is, providing that overall technical vision, oversight, and setting the tone for system design and implementation is one of the pillars underpinning the role of IT architects.

Another key part of the IT architect's role is in its positioning at the intersection of business and technology. As such, the architect, a competent architect, that is, will have an understanding of both the business context and the technology context of an application.

It can't be any other way as the architect needs both of these to design the right architecture for that particular use case or product.

The challenge that many architects have is that hiding in between these two dimensions of business and technology - are mistakes and  pitfalls that most, if not all, architects have made at one point or another.

Yet, in my experience, these mistakes are seldom talked about and even more rarely addressed. Most architects are simply unaware as no one points out these mistakes to them and so the mistakes continue to happen. The result is unnecessary challenges, stress, and an impediment to the architect's success. For the organization, there is also an increased level of risk and, needless to say, sub-optimal performance from those in IT architect types of roles.

In this piece, we discuss these mistakes and outline how to solve them thereby setting up architects for success within the organization and in their individual careers.

Mistake 1:

Speaking to a business audience in technical terms.

Your business stakeholders do not care about your awesome architecture or the latest tech stack the team has decided to use.

Yet, these same stakeholders are key in moving the project forward. In fact, they are very likely the reason that the project exists in the first place. As an architect, technical lead, or sometimes, one of the more experienced developers on the team - it is your role to be that key interface between technology and business.

For the Business, this means that you are the go to person to explain complex technical decisions, challenges, and topics in a way that they would understand.

For the development team, you are the one who understands the deep technical reality of the product with all of its intricacies and nuances while also having a general understanding of business context, non functional requirements (NFR), and product vision.

However, so many software architects make the mistake of being way too technical in their communication with business folk. They focus on the technicalities and inner workings of the system. The transaction management, the scalability issues, the memory garbage collection, the FIFO queues, or the intermittently failing CQRS logic.

But, your stakeholders just glaze over. They have neither the understanding nor the appreciation for any of that. They simply don't care. And you know what? They're right.

This isn't their world. Their world is that of budgets, timelines, promises to clients, revenue, and moving the organization's needle forward. That's what they know and that's what they handle best.

How often have you seen technical folks go into the nitty gritty of technical implementation while the Business audience is sitting there struggling to put together in their minds what's being said? That's at best. At worst, they might politely (or not so politely) cut the conversation off and steer it into the direction important to them.

Don't make this mistake. It's too common, and there really is no reason for it. Effective architects match their messaging and its presentation to the audience. If the audience is a C-suite - the focus has to be on high level impact, long-term implications, key risks, costs, and very limited technical jargon (if at all).

On the other hand if the audience is a group of technical project managers and product owners, the focus will most likely be on shorter-term timeliness, immediate challenges, with some careful and fairly shallow dive-into technical topics where appropriate.

The Takeaway

As an architect, you are the translator of "tech-speak" to "business-speak" and vice versa. Know how to move the dial on the level of technical detail with accordance to who your audience is. The more technical the audience, the deeper into technicalities you will go in and the other way around.

Mistake 2:

Not caring about "Implementation" or "Technical Details"

Mistake #1 is all about being too "technical". Diving too much into the weeds of the implementation and the inner-workings of the machinery in front of an audience that is not equipped to understand any of it. 

However, there is another mistake that architects and technology leaders make and which is as commonplace and ubiquitous and yet is diametrically opposed to Mistake #1. Almost sitting at the other extreme.

As an architect you typically grow into this role from the role of a software developer/engineer. What typically happens is that, over time, you become less focused on implementation and more focused on the higher level constructs for which the architect role exists. These are the architectural characteristics of the application, non-functional requirements, architectural trade-offs, documenting the overarching design of your application and much more.

Your attention shifts. However, with that attention shifting, you often become less "hands-on" with the code and "lower-level" technical decision making. 

One of the key moments in an architect's career is knowing how to maintain that balance between understanding and handling the deeper details of implementation and at the same time also understanding the broader, higher-levels, concepts of system architecture and system governance.

Many architects, in time, lose touch with the implementation and gravitate towards the higher level constructs. Sometimes, they move past even those and lose touch with the architecture itself by diving fully into the business domain.

I've seen it happen at almost every place where I have worked or consulted. So many teams had architects who lost touch with the technical side of a project and whose role was reduced to that of being "architect" on paper only but not in reality.

You could easily spot those kinds of architects because when asked about anything even remotely technical regarding the system, they couldn't answer.

"I am not a developer any longer"

"I am not technical anymore"

"This is an implementation detail"

Etc

Now, don't get me wrong. Sometimes, it is indeed an implementation detail. Often, the architect really does not need to know these low level details and does not necessarily need to create code that goes into production.

But once again - it's about striking a balance.

An architect who can't tell you which classes exist in your database connectivity layer, but can tell you everything about the NFRs of the system, how it was designed, what integrations it has, etc - is one thing.

However, an architect who cannot tell you anything of the above while at the same time attending all of the important business stakeholder meetings and having coffee with the VP three times a week - is something entirely different.

The Takeaway

The architect's unique role requires striking a balance between the technical and the non-technical. Each organization, each role, and each project may be different in how to manifest that balance, but the need to find it will always be there. At the same time, the role of the IT architect is one that is rooted in technology - even though it touches on the business domain. It is only through the understanding of both the deep technical aspects and, as the same time - how they affect the business context that the architect can bring out the role's true value.

Mistake 3:

Being a 'seagull' architect - diving to criticize and then disappearing.

It's bad enough when the architect is nowhere to be found when needed, but what's even worse is when the architect appears at random times - out of nowhere. 

The architect then criticizes various aspects of the design and architecture, which were, if we are being truthful, constructed entirely by others. 

After criticizing the entire thing, the architect would later vanish without offering anything of value. Even if the criticism is valid - there is no guidance, no accountability, no real feedback of substance that follows. There are no alternatives suggested nor an explanation of what the team got wrong.

This mistake is really a symptom of two problems. First, it means that the architect has not been involved enough in the project along the way to provide real value. Secondly, it often means that the architect's role was not properly established within the team so the delineation of responsibilities between the architect, technical lead, and the developers - most likely does not exist.

Where there is no clarity, there is confusion, and where there is confusion, the team's products are rarely set up for success.

The Takeaway

Whatever your role as an architect means in your particular organization, make sure that the team knows what is the extent of your responsibilities and how they mesh or overlap with the other members of the team. Be involved in the project continuously and as aligned to your responsibilities and how the team understands them. Accountability and your continued guidance to the team are key here. Alignment with your manager is important for this as well.

Mistake 4:

Being too focused on technical nuance while ignoring the big picture

This phenomenon often comes hand in hand with Mistake 1 - being too invested in the technicalities of a project. I’ve worked with architects who could spend hours debating event-driven semantics or the internals of an RDBMS but couldn’t explain how their design maps to business value. Similarly, I've worked with many technology leaders who optimize the codepath to save 30ms while the real bottleneck is a manual approval queue.

The true value of software architecture as a discipline is about leverage. Impact often comes from setting clear system boundaries, empowering the team, creating clarity of intent, and bridging the gap between Business and Technology. Not from shaving millisecond cycles off a low-level function. Though sometimes that matters too.

The Takeaway

Zoom out. Connect the dots. Don't sweat the low level stuff unless it really matters. Know where your role brings out true value for that particular product or team. Sometimes, it may indeed be in improving the way your system does garbage collection or the search algorithm the team has implemented. Often though, the value will be outside of the immediate technical details of a system and will be set on a broader and higher level.

Mistake 5:

Not Aligning With Business Goals

This mistake is one that is very easy to make and is often made even by architects who know how to balance between the technical and business domain. Though, from my experience in development, architecture, and consulting, it does frequent the more technically oriented minds a little more. In a way, this is often due to Mistake 4 or focusing on the technical "trees" without seeing the non-technical "forest".

The mistake here is in not realizing that anything done from a technology standpoint has to support business goals and align with the overarching business strategy. It seems obvious, yet it is often missed as teams focus on this or that implementation, product design, integration, and vendor onboarding. 

Time and time again, I would come across products, systems, and applications that were built without really focusing on how they help the business. I've seen it happen throughout my career across many different organizations and teams of all sizes and maturity levels.

The simple fact is that people often get carried away focusing on the details while at the same time losing focus of the big picture.

The Takeaway

Always ask "why". 

"Why" are we doing this?

"Why" am I building the architecture this or that way?

"Why" are we landing on this particular technology?

Now that you've established the "why", ask - "how does this help the business"? If the answer is unclear, it needs to be clarified. If there is no answer, you're going after the wrong thing and need to go back to the drawing board.

Mistake 6:

Over-engineering the system in the pursuit of the perfect architecture

It’s often very tempting to build something grandiose - especially for technically minded folks. You see all the possibilities. You want it to be clean, scalable, future-proof. The best of the best. The problem is that trying to design the “perfect” system ends up delaying delivery, overwhelms teams, and often ends up in an attempt to solve problems that don’t exist yet and that in all likelihood may never occur.

Often, it happens for the most altruistic reasons but the result is counterproductive nevertheless. That is not to say that you should not be designing the best application possible under the circumstances or that you should be cutting corners.

However, there are ways to build applications the best way we can under the context and the reality we are building for. There is a way to make decisions in a mindful, deliberate manner, and there is nothing wrong with making imperfect choices if they are justified and if they support the overall vision and are clearly documented and understood.

Good architecture is never perfect. But it’s always pragmatic and deliberate. This is where trade-off analysis comes into play. 

You may need to build something that serves a hundred requests per minute at most. That architecture will be vastly different from something that must serve a million requests per second. Although you may have the temptation to build something like the latter (and it truthfully is an exciting and worthy challenge) - the reality may be that your business use case simply does not warrant it. Even if it will warrant it in the future, it is way off from your current budget, timelines, and stakeholder expectations.

The Takeaway

Consider building what you need to succeed now and create the flexibility to evolve later. Ensure that what you are building really benefits the project and isn't just a figment of some wishful thinking for a future that may never come. Remember that architecture for architecture sake, and technology for technology sake may be fun and great for learning or POCs. When it comes to the real products though, as we talked about in Mistake 5 - everything must be aligned to business goals.

Most important - communicate! Make sure your team and your stakeholders understand the limitations and know the implications of them. Sometimes - it's helpful to chart a way forward in how the system would evolve if it needed to. It doesn't mean that you will be building it for "Day 1" though.

Mistake 7:

Confusing activity with impact

This one’s subtle and it gets even seasoned architects. In fact, the more senior an architect is, the greater the likelihood of falling into this trap.

Just because one attends a lot of meetings, writes heaps of documentation, and comments on every design from every department (regardless of whether they ask) - doesn’t mean you’re moving the organization, the team, or the product forward. If you’re not helping teams make better decisions, reduce risk, or deliver faster, what you are doing is activity. But there is no real impact.

Real impact often looks boring. Unblocking a team. Aligning two stakeholders. Mentoring developers. Quietly simplifying a complex process. Making a small but hugely important architectural decision. 

The reason why seasoned architects often fall into this trap is because they become complacent with the activities that they do. At some point, they stop asking - is what I am doing really providing value or am I just "pushing papers around"?

Now, don't get me wrong. Not everything that you do as an architect will always have a tangible, measurable impact or clearly visible value. This is not limited to the role of the architect, but most other tech roles as well. Also, you will most likely not have full control over every activity. Some activities will be mandated as part of your role.

However, to maximize the impact and value of what you do as an IT architect - it is of tremendous help to be consistently cognizant of the activities you perform and in asking yourself the question - is there an impact here? Or just an activity?

The Takeaway

It's actually pretty simple. Focus on outcomes, not optics. Communicate with your team. Ask what it is that they need from you, as an IT/software architect, that will help them the most? Align with your manager on the areas that they consider to be the most impactful.

Summary

There are many mistakes that IT architects make all the time. These mistakes stand in the way of career fulfillment, growth, and success. Fortunately, once you understand what these mistakes are, they are fairly straightforward to fix. After all, software architecture, at its core, is really about being mindful and deliberate with your choices and decisions. It's a complex role with a lot of nuance. Once you understand it though, you unlock its full potential for a great and rewarding career.

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There is a lot more nuance to the software/IT architect's role beyond the seven mistakes described in this article. That's why I wrote the Unlocking the Career of Software Architect guide. In this guide, I summarized my 25 years of experience in the world of IT as a developer, architect, director, and consultant by talking about key topics rarely mentioned elsewhere.

It is a comprehensive resource that describes the "ins" and "outs" of the software architect's career path, the challenges, the solutions, and success factors. This guide's mission is to set you up for success in your architecture career - whether you are a new IT architect or one with decades of experience.

If you want to succeed and thrive in the role of an IT architect, I invite you to check out this guide.

Unlock The Career of Software Architect