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    I read a comment here somewhere that said architecture is a team sport. If you're handing over from the architects to the development team, you're probably doing it wrong. Commented Dec 7, 2011 at 9:16
  • @Ant, I agree in principal. A complete handover and then walking away is definitely doing it wrong. Handing a design over, and then working with developers to refine the design and guide the process, while leaving the details to the developers, and staying with a project to the end is doing it better. This is why you'll never truly see a successful software project where a design team was contracted in and then asked to leave once the specification documents were "completed". Commented Dec 7, 2011 at 14:57
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    At one place I worked, handover was essentially accomplished by providing Development with a mostly implemented prototype that generally worked and would under no circumstances scale. However, you said you wanted to improve your process, not make it worse. Commented Dec 7, 2011 at 19:20
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    @DavidThornley I was at a company that had an architecture group that did that. They would sit around and stroke their gray beards, postulating ridiculous ideas that are full of holes and logical dead-ends. They would then whip up a poorly implemented prototype that only vaguely demonstrates their mental masturbation. It would then get handed off to a development team so they could "implement" it, but the development team would quickly realize that the idea ignored several mostly insurmountable problems, causing the project to fail. Architects took no responsibility for failures of course. Commented Dec 7, 2011 at 20:26
  • In large shops (and according to TOGAF standards) there are several distinct architecture disciplines: Enterprise, Security, Infrastructure, Solution etc. etc. Using the term Architect or architecture on its own is meaningless. The question appears to be about "Solution Architecture" and the answer is that the Solution Architect should be an integral member of the development team. Commented Dec 8, 2011 at 1:51