I found this article, Escape Metropolis: Bridging the Divide Between Developers and Architects an interesting read.  I am both an architect and a developer and understand the distrust a developer has for an architect.  Since developers are the ones who produce the actual code they feel they are the real workers.  I strongly believe an Systems Architect really needs to be an active developer to do a good job and fully understand the problem at hand.  I know I have been in the role of architect and only because I was also a developer could I fully prove what I proposed was the right way to go.  It has happened where the proposed solution ended up being the wrong one and the reason it wasn't a problem was because it was found in the "proof of concept" phase, which is always needed. I have posted about this in the past here. Technorati Tags : System Architect, Microsoft