Something that really gets to me in the software business is the constant stream of meaningless buzwords, three-letter-acronyms (TLA's) and completely overloaded terms.

I have been calling my self "solutions architect" or "architect advisor", because most of the work I have done in my career is to either "architect" solutions or lately help others do so.

Unfortunately the industry seems to think that architecture is just about everything including high-level modelling, writing code, being a domain expert, being able to apply knowledge to any domain, sell solutions, manage politics, manage project process and risk, mentor others, be vendor neutral, be a subject matter expert in some detail of some vendors technology, have the big picture and the list goes on and on.

A colleague of mine makes some good points and lists some of the architect definitions here. Here's a slightly modified list
http://www.bredemeyer.com/pdf_files/role.pdf
http://www.agilearchitect.org/agile/role.htm
http://www.artima.com/intv/architect.html
http://www.certmag.com/articles/templates/CM_gen_Article_template.asp?articleid=1406&zoneid=225
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/architect/archcompetencies/default.mspx

TOGAF even defines a list of architect types and the skills and competencies each type of architect should have. The list is located at http://www.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf8-doc/arch/p4/skills/skills.htm).

So I thought that simply calling myself "solutions architect" or "architect advisor" was too unprecise and missleading. I tried to define the correct type as XML:

<

 

However, for some reason that seemed too complicated as well.

 

Finally I decided to simply call myself a Experinced Software Professional, or simply ESP to be industry compliant with the TLA's :-o

Btw, I noticed that Wikipedia list more than 30 meanings of ESP, but none in software...

 

I have also removed the word architecture from the title of my blog and from now I'll blog about software, not about about architecture or process.

 

Note: These are all my personal opinions based on my observations and it doesn't reflect my employer's view point.

Ahh - know it feels better. Glad I got it of my chest ;-)

Yours truly
Michel Baladi
ESP