on a side note, i've witnessed a big difference between code that was properly architectured from the beginning, to code that evolved in a purely iterative fash

on a side note, i've witnessed a big difference between code that was properly architectured from the beginning, to code that evolved in a purely iterative fashion, driven by end-user feature tickets. Architecture design is to me a different beast from simply refactoring, because it is also meant to anticipate future evolutions, in order to provide a solid technical layer upon which feature can be iterated. Unfortunately i don't think a lot of teams knows when is a good time to seriously think about the time to (re)design / architecture a system. Nor what is truely meant by "architecture" ( hint: no, it's not just about picking the latest MVC variation of day).