What an architect should do? [closed]

Question

It seems that the role of architect varies in between software companies. What does the role of a standard architect include?

E.g...

1. Draw high level diagrams and explain to the team why this is a reasonable architecture.

2. Write documents for managers or customers.

3. Write the infrastructure of a software upon to which others add more features.

4. Write various prototypes and run performance tests.

5. Conceive additional features and improvement to existing features and guide the team towards them.

6. Other responsibilities.

Answer 1

There are many types of software architects and companies expect them to play different roles based on the company and the projects. But I do believe the following bullet points are necessary for any software architect.

1. An architect maintains control over the architecture lifecycle parallel to the project’s software development lifecycle.

2. An architect stays on course in line with the long term vision. When project's scope creep attempts to manipulate software architecture in a certain way in order to satisfy the desires of myriad stakeholders the architect must know when to say "NO" to select requests in order to say "YES" to others.

3. An architect progressively makes critical decisions that define a specific direction for a system in terms of implementation, operations, and maintenance.

4. An architect works closely with executives to explain the benefits and justify the investment in software architecture of a solution.

5. An architect inspires, mentors, and encourages colleagues to apply intelligently customized industry’s best practices.

6. An architect fights entropy that threatens architect’s structural approach to problem solving.

7. An architect creates and distributes tailored views of software architectures to appropriate stakeholders at appropriate intervals.

8. An architect acts as an agent of change in organizations where process maturity is not sufficient for creating and maintaining architecture centric development.