NeoVictorian Architecture

In Good Tech Writing, Tim Bray references a wonderful series of articles from Mark Bernstein - NeoVictorian Computing.

Marks explores the topic of why we in computing are unhappy and what we might do to rectify the situation. The series is well worth the read.

While reading the articles, my mind connected some of Mark's observations with Don Norman's needs-satisfaction curve. Perhaps we are shifting our focus to our own user experience as we cross a sufficiency point with technology.

Perhaps we would also be well served to remember that an enterprise is also a technology.

Pumpkin Futures in IT

In Enterprise Architecture and Agile, Ed Gibbs chimes in on the topic of whether EA and Agile are inherently incompatible.

The author of the article he references takes the stance that the two are probably incompatible. Ed differs from this view. He invokes the reminder that any incompatibility is probably due to an ivory tower model for EA.

I partially agree, but would like to contribute another facet to the overall conversation.

First off, I'm near the front of the line when it comes to the topic of EA needing to improve its ability to provide substance and value. By some accounts, some of us will turn into pumpkins around the year 2012.

Agile methods can indeed be a useful addition to the EA tool belt. It should be noted, however, that not all aspects of an architecture are an obvious fit for an incremental or agile model. When they do, the increments are sometimes on a longer time scale than those encountered in most agile development efforts.

This brings me to my real point.

There is a tyranny in both the EA ivory tower and the scrum. There is also a tyranny in PMBOK and ITIL. All of them seem highly prone to multiculturalism in the name of standardization and simplification.

We are allergic to diversity. However... Diversity leads to resilience. Resilience leads to survival.

I see no inherent incompatibility between EA and Agile.

A Herd of IT Elephants

Andrew Clifford recently posted The root of all evil, another in his series Journey to the sixth circle of hell.

In this latest article, Andrew provides his list of the Big Problems in IT:

• The high failure rate of large, expensive projects.
• The growth in unmanageable "legacy" systems.
• The shortage of skilled staff

I imagine each of us has our own BPiIT list.

Here's mine:

• Everybody wants to have "rode an elephant" on their resume
• Nobody wants to have "cleaned up after elephants" on their resume
• Training elephants is hard

IT Impedance Mismatch?

I stumbled upon an interesting slide deck, Information Technology Team Dynamics. It summarizes some work sponsored by the Defense Systems Management College in the US Department of Defense.

The deck provides a reasonably detailed picture of work done to analyze team dynamics in IT organizations relative to several personality classification methods.

It's an interesting read for those interested in the topic.

It presents some thought provoking findings. A few in particular caught my attention.

• Preference for intuition was 40% higher in the study group than the MBTI national sample
• Preference for thinking was nearly twice the percentage found in the MBTI national sample
• Feeler and perceivers were underrepresented relative to the MBTI national sample
  

Put another way, the study group seemed to have a higher concentration of people that exhibited an

• increased preference for abstract theoretical information over concrete sensory information
• increased preference for rule-based decisions over consensus based decisions
• decreased comfort with changing course when new information is available
  

These are at direct odds with situations in which

• previous working theories are disintegrating under new market conditions
  
• new information is capable of arriving at ever increasing rates

It would be inappropriate to apply these to IT as a whole, particularly given that the application of Myers Briggs requires some subtlety and care. The basic analytical process can, however, provide some interesting food for thought when mapping out longer term strategies.

How many IT organizations are fundamentally mismatched to the problems they face?