How Software Architects Focus Their Attention

As part of our software architecture research and practice we have found that a common difficulty for new architects is knowing where to focus their attention tomaximise their effectiveness. This led us towonderwhether successful experienced architects have any common techniques or heuristics that they use to help them achieve this. In an earlier study where, having interviewed experienced architects, we found that in fact there were some common heuristics that they use, we created a simple model based on an analysis of their advice. In this paper we explain howwe validated that modelwith awider survey of experienced enterprise and software architects and, from the findings of that study, extended the model with an additional dimension. This resulted in our model having four primary guidelines, which are: focus on stakeholder needs and priorities, prioritise time according to risks, delegate as much as possible, and ensure team effectiveness.