Steve,

I'd like to comment on the portion of your editorial that went like this: "These days I think architecture is important, at least at a coordinating level. I don't know that it needs to be a full time job, but we need a person not too distracted by daily work examining how we build our systems. Perhaps this is the type of position that someone with a lot of experience that wants to work part time ought to hold."

As an architect, I feel that the position is not as irrelevant as your comment seems to indicate. I have worked in many environments over my 30+ years and have seen the result of multiple systems that were developed without an overall enterprise architect's involvement. Each project went in different directions instead of leveraging common platforms and functionality. This is not an issue only with small environments, but large ones as well. Group A may be running off with on-premises SQL Server, while another is using AWS, and yet another doing something completely different. It's even worse when their goals overlap and they are duplicating efforts but with different architectures.

Having an architect involved in the projects helps to keep things in a common framework. Due to knowledge of Group A's efforts, the architect can help Group B's project to benefit from lessons already learned or to utilize common components/platforms/data. The architect also helps to enforce standards (however they are determined) and to maintain consistency across various initiatives/projects. Time, money, and effort can all be saved and allow projects to be done in a smooth and efficient manner. With so many projects running in an Agile method with short time frames, communication with other groups often is limited which leads to information existing in silos and duplicated efforts.

No matter the size of the company, involving an architect in the data, platform, and overall design is very beneficial. As an architect, I've also been involved in development and QA efforts as well causing such a position to be more than full-time! In most cases, the enterprise architect is the only one with an overall view of the entire enterprise spanning all projects and systems. That's a key resource that cannot be overlooked.