Being an Architect is a lonely job. You get to interact with all the stakeholder one can think of, and sure, everybody has an opinion, but in the end you get to make the important decisions by yourself. Even when an organization has  several architects, many times only one is assigned to a project at a given time. Well maybe it is time to move to pair architecting (pair programming redux for architects)

 

Over the past few months I've had the chance to work with another architect (Udi Dahan ) on an the architecture for a new product line.

 

This actually proved to be a very positive experience:

• You get informed feedback for ideas
• You get to look at a problem from more angles
• Working together helps refine the design (instant reviews and mutual feedback)
• You can play good cop/bad cop (or bad cop/worse cop :)) vs. The different stakeholders (PM, Devs, SMEs etc.)
• You can divide the work to get more things done (be less of a bottleneck)
  • It is also easier to work at the different levels required with less context switching ( presenting to non-technical customers, working with programmers, convincing upper management etc.)

 

Now, few iterations into the project, the architecture is pretty stabilized, but, we're still working together only now we mostly divide the work between us. I get to do the "fun" stuff - working with the marketing guys; working on the schedule and iterations with the project manager; etc. While Udi plays the "Architect as a coach" with the developers of the team as well as redesigning the clients (After we gave too much slack to the client team during the previous 2 iterations)

 

Now I wouldn't recommend bringing too many architects into the fray as this can easily degrade to a "design by committee" sort of effort  but it is definitely  beneficial to have more than one architect working on a project.