[Timberwolf]

In my experience, architects who are valuable to their teams tend to be the ones who rarely do any "architecture" themselves; instead they work their arse off trying to smash apart every last blocker to the engineers in a team being able to own architectural responsibilities themselves. (This may include asking smart questions to help a team who don't really do systems thinking start engaging with it). This inevitably ends up off in the EA realm grappling with Conway-type questions: not so much "how should we structure our software to make it good?" as "how should we structure our organisation so it naturally produces good software?"

Sadly these people are also rare as it requires a combination of sufficient technical skill and the ability to effectively navigate the people side of the equation.

The "white paper" style of architect is very frustrating in comparison, not least because they are too removed from the context and impact of their decisions. This results in a situation where a team views their architect as merely a source of additional work, much of which is frustrating and pointless if not outright damaging to the system being built.