Practicing continuous learning

Part of being a professional software architect involves continuously improving your knowledge portfolio. In the software development industry, technologies and development approaches are constantly changing. Just as software systems must adapt to a changing landscape, software architects must adapt as well. Existing skills can become obsolete and a vital part of maintaining your value is ensuring your skills remain relevant. Each software architect should remain humble and understand that there is so much that they do not know.

One of the things that can separate an average software architect or developer from a really good one is that individuals who set themselves apart are constantly trying to improve themselves. They are not satisfied with their current knowledge base and want to always learn something new. Great software architects understand that the field of software development is constantly changing and, in order to stay great in their profession, they have to keep up.

Even if you are strong in a particular language, tool, or framework, that skill can become stale as technologies evolve. For example, if you consider yourself an expert C#/.NET developer, but get away from practicing those skills for a while, you can lose some degree of that competence. In addition, that particular language and/or framework will have evolved over that time, and if you do not keep up with the changes, you may not maintain your expert level of knowledge.