It is very important to trailblaze unknown territory through activities such as mockups, prototyping, and spiking. However, I sometimes find “architect” level people providing no more worth to their team than a whiteboard full of boxes and arrows and a mouthful of hollow words of encouragement (sarcastic quotes explained). What teams need is clear direction on a clear path.
If what I just said wasn’t clear enough, let me be more blunt – whiteboarding and diagramming are the lowest forms of architecture and they provide the least amount of worth. .. These activities 99% of the time are nothing more than echoes of the obvious – as a leader it is your responsibility to give direction to the non-obvious!
From How To Be A Tracer Bullet Architect by Max Pool