In a great article, Lou Adler argues that there are really
only four
job types in
the world. He describes them like this:
Everything starts with an idea. This is the first of the four jobs – the Thinkers. Builders convert these ideas into
reality. This the second job. Improvers make
this reality better. This is the third job. Producers do the
work over and over again, delivering quality goods and services to the
company’s customers in a repeatable manner. This is the fourth job. And then
the process begins again with new ideas and new ways of doing business being
developed as the old ones become stale.
If we apply this
taxonomy to the Architect Role, we can very quickly see how the “thinker” role
seems to apply. However, he also states
that most jobs are some combination of these with one or two of them being
predominant. In our case, it seems
pretty clear that the Architect role is a combination of Thinkers and
Builders. In fact, while interviewing
architects for this book, I realized that the variation of architects and how
they view their role is largely a display of these two factors playing
out. By having more of one than the
other, you get the various types of architects that we tend to see in our
lives:
·
The hand waver (100% thinker, 0% builder). We all know architects who are
really good on the whiteboard, but can’t actually make anything. My bias is that this type of architect is not
useful because no value gets produced by them directly. This is perhaps unfair because extremely
complex systems need people who are 100% thinkers to get the abstractions and
concepts right.
·
The Visionary (75% thinker, 25% builder).
This person is really bright and sees the future clearly. However, their light builder bias means that
although they’re aware of reality, they’re not really bound by it. Think Steve Jobs. While this model is worshiped in Silicon
Valley, it turns out that these folks have limited utility. You only need one visionary in your org,
right?
·
The Far Seer (50% thinker, 50% builder).
This person usually has an operational or dev background. They have vision but it’s firmly grounded in
reality. It’s tougher for these types of
architects to invent new paradigms but they’re really good at figuring out N+1
or N+2.
·
The “Gets Shit Done” (25% thinker, 75%
builder). This is the guy who simply gets it done. Give them a sort spec sheet and you see them
go to the white board right away. A few
hours later, you’re getting functional diagrams and then code shortly
thereafter. They’re probably building
their own prototypes. This type of architect
works really well in a small shop and in agile style dev organizations.
·
The Principal Engineer (0% thinker, 100%
builder). This guy is an architect in name only. Perhaps they rose up from the eng
organization or is the most senior guy on the team. Just because you can code rings around
everyone else on the planet, does not make you an architect. Sorry.
You may want to
apply these metrics to yourself. What
percentage of your intellect do you apply to the thinker or builder side of the
equation? When you work with other
architects, how do they align to this continuum?
Personally, I
find myself somewhere between the Far Seer and the Visionary. I’m no Steve Jobs, but I’m usually
comfortable thinking about complex abstract problems. However, I also like getting my hands
dirty. So, I fall somewhere in-between.
