The final challenging area to delivering at a faster pace technology is – us the technology people.

The mindset of techies impacts our ability to communicate with the business – what seems obvious to the developers and techies is not obvious to the business and vice versa. Often the tech community doesn’t help itself, it doesn’t value the ability to express the technology problems in a way that the business can understand.

As an illustration of this perspective problem, I found a illusion created by Prof. Kokichi Sugihara. In this illusion, he has a cylinder that looks like a square from one angle and a circle from another. The techies think they’re doing a great job and delivering what they have been asked to – a nice square. When the business sees the result, they see and talk about the pro’s and con’s of the circle. There ensues some confused conversations, that can actually last over a number of weeks and impact many, many tickets.

We need to make sure we stand next to the business, so that we can also see clearly what they are describing and not be on the other side of the table.  

What can be done about these challenges?

That is the scene setting. The following blog posts can be read in any order. Each one looks at a problem area and what actions you can take, as an architect.