The Agile architecture question makes me wonder this.
Does it depends of what is being build ? Do applications (I mean single computing program here) have an architecture ?
UPDATE: to try to clarify the question, I'll give my opinion on the question: I defined the architecture as the cutting of the system in components, and the relationships between the components ;while the design is about the interns of the component. Is this opinion shared ?
Interesting answers in this Joel's thread forum
One of the funniest:
In my experience, about $30k.
One of the shortest:
I would say that "design" is what is done to achieve an architecture
Architecture can cover issues beyond the scope of design, such as an entire line of products, or a range of versions of a single product. Architecture also deals with the famous "ilities", such as testability, upgradability, reliability, availability etc etc.
You will find in SEI further definitions of Software Architecture where design is mentionned.
It's really fairly simple: architecture is about the design decision you make to meet the "non-functional" requirements: requirements like cost, maintainability, performance, reliability, availability, and security. This about a web application: you can build it in a zillion ways, from a big C program that runs as a CGI (really, we used to do that), a Python webapp, to a J2EE application, to a LAMP application. Any of them would have the same functional behavior, they all would post the same pages; the differences come in when you try to change the C program's database or load-balance your big LAMP application.
Architecture can be defined as the set of the principal design decisions about the system.The design decision like the decisions related to the behavior of the system,system structure,system interaction and the design is a plan or scheme that gets executed.
It is purely subjective. Whatever the dev lead or architect says is the truth.
