One might have expected that the architectresponsible for the Liverpool Public Library, and after whom its main readingroom is named, Sir James Allanson Picton, would have been an ideal Readerfor the OED but Murray wrote ‘no good’ and put a red squiggle through hisentry.

Although the architect could code, as the title suggests, there are other ways for the architect to stay engaged with the delivery, such as pairing and peer reviews.

Rotating the architect role among different team members carries the benefit of increasing the overall team’s working architectural knowledge. Team members gain a better understanding of all the roles involved in delivery, leading to empathy between team roles, improved intra-team interaction, and a better overall product by diversifying the viewpoints applied to each role.

Similarly, when I ask other architects how much they’ve coded recently, more often than not I hear: “It’s been a while.”