True architects understand the art of omission and know where to dig deeper

The image that most people have of system architects resembles that of architects of buildings and constructions. They expect these professionals to divide complex machines or products into parts, give them properties and define the interfaces between them. It all boils down to sketching and drawing. In practice, these tasks are also the most visible. In buildings, but also in the technical industry, where sketching is expressed in block diagrams, CAD drawings or piping and instrumentation diagrams. All the parts are made visible and you can see how things connect.

An architect indeed has to make a system or product transparent. But that’s only the basis and not what the job is really about. “If you cut it up into pieces, look at those pieces and at the connections between them, all you have is a static image,” says Gerrit Muller, professor at the University of Southeast Norway in Kongsberg and founder of the Sysarch training courses at High Tech Institute.