Systems architect

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The systems architect is an information and communications technology professional. Systems architects define the architecture of a computerized system (i.e., a system composed of software and hardware) in order to fulfill certain requirements.

Duties[]

In systems design, the architects (and engineers) are responsible for:

• Interfacing with the user(s) and sponsor(s) and all other stakeholders in order to determine their (evolving) needs.
• Generating the highest level of system requirements, based on the users' needs and other constraints.
• Ensuring that this set of high level requirements is consistent, complete, correct, and operationally defined.
• Performing cost–benefit analyses to determine whether requirements are best met by manual, software, or hardware functions; making maximum use of commercial off-the-shelf or already developed components.
• Developing partitioning algorithms (and other processes) to allocate all present and foreseeable requirements into discrete partitions such that a minimum of communications is needed among partitions, and between the users and the system.
• Partitioning large systems into (successive layers of) subsystems and components each of which can be handled by a single engineer or team of engineers or a subordinate architect.
• Interfacing with the design and implementation engineers and architects, so that any problems arising during design or implementation can be resolved in accordance with the fundamental design concepts, and users' needs and constraints.
• Ensuring that a maximally robust and extensible design is developed.
• Generating a set of acceptance test requirements, together with the designers, test engineers, and the users, which determine that all of the high-level requirements have been met, especially for the computer-human-interface.
• Generating products such as sketches, models, an early user guide, and prototypes to keep the users and the engineers constantly up to date and in agreement on the system to be provided as it is evolving.
• Ensuring that all architectural products and products with architectural input are maintained in the most current state and never allowed to seriously lag or become obsolete.

Architect metaphor[]

The use of any form of the word "architect" is regulated by "title acts" in many states in the US, and a person must be licensed as a building architect to use it.^[1]

In the UK the architects registration board excludes the usage of architect (when used in the context of software and IT) from its restricted usage. ^[2]

See also[]

• Enterprise architecture
• Enterprise architect
• Hardware architecture
• Requirements analysis
• Software architecture
• Software engineering
• Systems architecture
• Systems modeling
• Systems engineering
• Systems design
• Business analyst
• Service-oriented modeling framework (SOMF)

References[]

Further reading[]

• Donald Firesmith et al.: The Method Framework for Engineering System Architectures, (2008)
• Mark W. Maier and Rechtin, Eberhardt, The Art of Systems Architecting, Third Edition (2009)
• Gerrit Muller, "Systems architecting: A business perspective," CRC Press, (2012).
• Eberhardt Rechtin, Systems Architecting: Creating & Building Complex Systems, 1991.
• J. H. Saltzer, M. F. Kaashoek, Principles of Computer System Design: An Introduction, Morgan Kaufmann, 2009.
• Rob Williams, Computer Systems Architecture: a Networking Approach, Second Edition (December 2006).

External links[]

• Principles of Computer System Design: An Introduction – MIT OpenCourseWare
• Systems Architecture: Canaxia Brings an Architect on Board, Article