[acg]

I'd go further than this, if this is confusing architecture with development. This is not to say that a senior developer or systems engineer could take on an architecture role: but this wouldn't be the check-list in my view.

An architect is more likely, like his building counterpart, to see the system from the top down. That is given a clean sheet of paper: How can we achieve the availablility and fault-tolerance we need? what is the threading model? how does the system connect to the outside world? etc...

Whoever takes the role of doing this makes sure that the direction of the implementation doesn't loose sight of these goals. He may even create non-functional requirements.