Four Types Of The Software Architect's Role in Product Teams

I often have the discussion about the ๐’“๐’๐’๐’† of the software architect in product teams.

๐Ÿ”น Is there one person ๐’•๐’‰๐’† software architect?
๐Ÿ”น Is the software architect role ๐’…๐’Š๐’”๐’•๐’“๐’Š๐’ƒ๐’–๐’•๐’†๐’… across the team?
๐Ÿ”น How do you make architecture and technology decisions?
๐Ÿ”น Who is responsible for software architecture decisions?

Based on these questions, I have tried to summarize four different types of roles that can determine the work of software architecture in a product team ๐Ÿ‘‡๐Ÿผ

The Benovelent Dictator

"Architect decides, Team executes" (Source)

The Benovelent Dictator

The Architecture Owner

"Architect as just-another Dev-Team Member"

Architecture Owner

Architecture Agents

"Divide the role of the architect on the specific know-how"

Architecture Agents

Architecture Democracy

"Independent and collaborative coordination in all architectural decisions."

Architecture Democracy


Which of these do you implement in your product teamโ“

Which do you preferโ“

By the way, in coming up with these role descriptions, I was heavily influenced by the following great blog posts and books ๐Ÿ™๐Ÿป:

Would you like architects with your architecture?
How to architect your organization to do architecture with or without architects.
Grundlagen der Softwarearchitektur: Teil 4
In dieser (vierten) Folge der Mini-Serie zu Softwarearchitektur klรคren wir, wer denn die Architekturaufgaben erledigen kรถnnte, die ich in der [vorigen Folge](xxx-link-auf-folge-3) vorgestellt habe. Dazu stelle ich einige mรถgliche Rollenausprรคgungen fรผr Softwarearchitektur mit ihren jeweiligen Vor- uโ€ฆ

Buch: Vorgehensmuster fรผr Software Architektur: Kombinierbare Praktiken in Zeiten von Agile und Lean

Do we need a software architect in our agile team?
This question often comes up in agile teams. In this blog post, we look for the answer to this question in the context of the various agile and organisational frameworks like Scrum, LeSS, SAFe, Disciplined Agile and draw a conclusion.

Past thoughts about the positioning of a software architect by analyzing different agile organisation frameworks.