The Firebrand Architect® phrase and the associated philosophy described in this section are the intellectual property of Constantin Kostenko ©2005 – 2008. Trade mark / sales mark application has been filed with the U.S. Patent Office.
The term “Firebrand Architect®” was coined by Constantin Kostenko in 2005 and materialized through a blog that eventually became part of SoftwareArchitectures.com. In essence, a Firebrand Architect® is a person that applies due diligence in understanding and justifying why design decisions are made in a certain way. This philosophy is especially applicable to software architects and business architects who are on the forefront of making sequential critical decisions that will ultimately define the function and properties of a solution destined to solve a business problem. Firebrand Architect® is someone who asks the hard questions, someone who takes stand for doing what makes sense, someone who sees the big picture over the course of time, and someone who understands the political landscape of an organization.
The core premise of the Firebrand Architect® philosophy is being able to answer why decisions are made in a certain way. This requires a high degree of self-awareness, personal integrity, and ethics. This requires constant evaluation of own strengths and weaknesses; plus it’s the information your customer has the right to know. Weaknesses can always be mitigated through education or partnership. Knowing when to bring an expert to assist with a specific segment of software architecture design or evaluation is more important than knowing it yourself. This may sound simple, but it’s really not. How does one know if his or her level of knowledge is sufficient for designing with a specific quality attribute in mind?
Getting architecture right in a software intensive system is a challenging task. It requires a thorough understanding of a problem domain, significant technical know-how, and mature judgment to make the right decisions at the right time. A Firebrand Architect® philosophy, when applied to software architecture, positions an architect to effectively think about a wide spectrum of problems and solutions. This design approach philosophy practiced by software architects ultimately results in responsible software architecture.
The Firebrand Architect® blog is an application of this philosophy to software architecture.
Therapist Clark Moustakas in his 1995 book “Being-In, Being-For, Being-With” eloquently defines the term firebrand. "The firebrand is the person who recognizes what is natural, what is organic, what is alive and vital in life, the person who dares to live, to be, and to create, often in the face of interference, rejection, deceit, and betrayal. The firebrand expresses himself in two basic ways: as the torch that lights up the darkness, and the as the carrier of the torch, throwing light into the darkness, and often disturbing complacency and brewing trouble. Being a firebrand is a way of raising temperatures and creating conflict, turbulence, and dissension. The motive of the firebrand is not to attack or destroy others but to bring to light a basic truth, to take a stand, and to declare and own who one is, especially in the face of perceived violations of one’s values and rights and interferences with one’s goals, purposes, and meanings ... The firebrand chooses to be different when being different represents a truth, when being different guides the fulfillment of basic human values and actualization of one’s potentials.”
The Firebrand Architect® phrase and the associated philosophy described in this section are the intellectual property of Constantin Kostenko ©2005 – 2008. Trade mark / sales mark application has been filed with the U.S. Patent Office.