Difference between a software architect and Software Designer

[newkidonthebloc]

I am curious to know about the difference between the kind of role software architect and software designer play during the life cycle of a product? How these roles are different in their nature? What are the skill set, they are supposed to posses?

[Pangloss]

The specific definitions for these terms are not universal. However, in general it's probably safe to say that a "software architect" is a programming position, whereas "software designer" may be more of a marketing or consulting type of position. That's not to say that the "designer" is less talented and they may very well be a programmer, but they may be more focused on matching the company's technical capabilities with the customer's needs, especially before the sale, whereas the "architect" is more concerned with carrying out the customer's instructions.

 

Or, again depending on the company, a "designer" may not be related to customer consulting at all, but may instead focus on usability and interface design, capabilities and feature sets, and/or documentation.

 

Or it may be something completely different.

[kaos]

I'm not 100% sure either, but I tend to think of architecture as a structure thing, meaning organization, protocols, APIs, file hierarchies, etc. I feel like a designer might design the user interface and idealize what it will do whereas an architect might decide how the project is organized, what classes/methods it will use, their params and return values, database structure, etc.

 

Here's wikipedia for you:

 

"The architect makes high-level design choices much more often than low-level choices. In addition, the architect may sometimes dictate technical standards, including coding standards, tools, or platforms, so as to advance business goals rather than to place arbitrary restrictions on the choices of developers. Note that software architects rarely deal with the physical architecture of the hardware environment, confining themselves to the design methodology of the code."

 

"Software design is a process of problem-solving and planning for a software solution. After the purpose and specifications of software are determined, software developers will design or employ designers to develop a plan for a solution. It includes low-level component and algorithm implementation issues as well as the architectural view."

 

So yeah... looks like the architect plans the project out and the designer actually writes most of the code.