On the responsibilities of software architects and software engineers in an agile environment

As there is considerable freedom for software workers to decide what to do in an agile environment, there is a need to be explicit about social aspects such as task ownership between roles and the agility in owning those tasks. We have conducted interviews and a survey at a large organization to explore these issues. The results indicate that there are areas where architects and software engineers have different views on task ownership. Some of the less exciting tasks such as documentation and issue clarification then easily become a hot potato nobody wants.