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Usually the conventional wisdom will always point out that patience wills always be better as it fosters the long terms goals and keeps us away from compromising designs based on short term gains. So for architects it appears that it is better to focus on patience as we are often those that keep the long time goals in place instead of project managers that are mainly interested to get a job done. So of course the first thing here is that when you work as a project related architect only such as a solution architect impatience may the better choice.
Patience also has a positive effect when practiced by architects as a patient architect is usually much more successful in convincing many stakeholders through a low key constant pointing out of things that need change, which in many organisations is the only way to start real change. Additional patience is very helpful when keeping to an architecture, as I have often seen architects changing their design just because they get bored of what they are doing. Patients also help us to work more successful with others. This is also the main reason that it is seen as a positive sign at a job interview.
On the other hand a patient architect is usually more likely never to spot the real problem as he will work of the initial requirements handed over to him. Impatience will help you in getting to the bottom of issues, as well as to spot and combat inertness. Inertness is present in each enterprise and it usually builds on the patience of others in the organisation to hide itself. This misuse of patience also manifests itself in other areas such as that a vendor will constantly promise improvements, but never really delivers it. I these areas a certain degree of impatience is a positive trend. Another problem with patience is that it often leads to complacency on changes and as such to the lack of competitiveness.
At the end in my view the best architect is someone with a solid foundation on patience in a way that it reflects his personality and a bit of professional impatience. So patience is something that in my view will always help us on a personal level as it stabilises us and makes us more attractive for others.
