The Four Types of Jobs

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.

Are you a Cop or are you the entertainment?

'Cause you can't be both.

One thing I hear all the time from IT organizations is that they are seeking to become services organizations.  They want to be an internal service provider or a "valued service provider."  I think that this is a very good thing and I always encourage my customers to take this direction if possible.

Unfortunately, what usually comes next is "and of course, we will need to maintain security standards and best practices."  Whoops.  That's not going to work.

If you think about people you do business with, they're usually folks that you like and you want to do business with.  Unless they're a monopoly like the cable company.  If you had a viable alternative to cable, would you take it?  Probably.  Nobody likes the cable company.  That's because you're forced to do business with them.  That type of relationship doesn't really end well once a viable alternative shows up.

Same thing with transforming your IT organization.  If your goal is to provide a very high level of service to your internal customers, you can't do that by telling them what NOT to do.  Think about it.  You don't invite the police to your party to help your guests have a good time, right?  Not that there's anything wrong with the cops, but they're definitely in the business of telling you what not to do.  They are not there to entertain you or help you have a good time.  No, you hire entertainers at the party and hope the cops don't show up.

How does this relate to IT?  

I think that we need to recognize that as an IT organization, we are in an impossible position when we attempt to both enforce rules and behave as a customer centric services organization.  In reality, no one organization can do both successfully.  I have never seen it done.  I'd be happy to be wrong here, please let me know if you have ever seen this done well.

My recommendation here is to split the function.  A small security and compliance function under the CFO along with all the other audit functions and a customer service organization under the COO.  This allows the two facets of IT to do their things without expecting the cops to sing and dance.

In the meantime, please check out my new "Masters Series" videos.  This blog post was inspired by my Masters Series interview with Alan Hakimi.  If you're an Architecture geek like I am, these videos are fascinating glimpses of how architects work.  Enjoy.

http://bit.ly/ajmasters

The 5% Solution?

I don't usually deal in absolutes.  The traditional consulting answer to any question is always "it depends."

However, in this case, I'm going to propose a rule.  Or perhaps as in "Pirates of the Carribian" it's more like a guideline.

"Never commit more than 5% of IT resources to any one project."

Perhaps we should refer to this as "Jauch's Law of IT Portfolios."

As loyal readers know, I'm a big fan of IT Portfolio management.  For those new to the program, this concept basically says that IT is just like any other investment.  You must balance your risk and actively manage your investments to maximize your return. 

This philosophy has some additional parallels.  I'm sure that any decent financial advisor will tell you to spread out your risk.  Not to get too deep into any one investment.  The same thing goes for IT.  For IT shops that are managing their IT portfolio, this rule is something to consider also.

If you are looking at overall IT resources and a single project starts sucking up more than 3 or 4 percent of total resources, you should be carefully considering that investment.  By committing, say, 10% of IT resources you are basically saying that your company is going to live or die based on the outcome.  A major failure in such a large project will be difficult to recover from.

This is an interesting reason why SaaS is so interesting.  By reducing capital outlay and spreading out payment to a vendor (basically a leasing scheme rather than outright purchase) SaaS has the side effect of pushing not only cost but also risk into the future.  Normally, SaaS can reduce the amount of internal labor required also because you don't need to build out your own infrastructure.

Does this mean that SaaS is good all the time?  Not at all.  Remember, that you want to have a broad portfolio.  Spending all your money on SaaS doesn't make any more sense that spending all your money on a huge SAP installation.  It's all about balance.

Don't Be Lazy. Create Value!

It's funny how cyclical the technology business is.  I guess that's not surprising since humans do tend to make the same mistakes over and over.  You would think that the rapid cycle time of our business would mean that folks haven't forgotten the old mistakes before making them again.  However, reality keeps proving me wrong again and again.

In this case, the failure is one of cost savings vs. value creation:

http://gigaom.com/2013/04/11/cloud-adoption-its-not-about-the-price-stupid/

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen companies chase the cost savings rabbit down the customer rabbit hole.  In the end, this strategy almost never works.  Eventually, you have to go back to the actual reason why you are in business:  to create value for your customers.

I'm not trying to say that cost cutting doesn't work.  Clearly, it does.  Just look at Walmart.  However, we are not talking about retail here.  In the technology business, we are not operating in an efficient commodity marketplace.  The object of our game is to create customer value by delivering IP in the form of technology.  Retail transactions are about providing the exact same goods to the consumer.  You really can't innovate much there.  It's about price, convenience and service.  This is not the business that we are in.

Perhaps some day the pace of innovation in the IT marketplace will slow down to the point where we're basically all selling the same thing but we're not there yet.

In the meantime, you really need to be focused on value and the customer's perception of your product's value to them.  If you can do this successfully then you will do well overall.

I've discussed this topic in the blog before, but for those who are new to this blog, you really should check out Mahan Khalsa's book:  "Lets Get Real or Let's Not Play."  Highly recommended even if you're even marginally involved with talking to customers.  As a non-sales guy, it's easy to think of sales as sleazy or icky in that used care salesman kind of way.  And this is a sad thing.  The reality is that most sales people suck.  It's only when you're in the presence of a highly functional sales team that you realize how powerful it can be to transform your customer's lives.

If you take Khalsa's precepts to heart, then your function is always to seek the customers needs (as opposed to their stated desires or wants) and then to satisfy those needs.  If the customer relationship is focused on this very important transaction, it becomes a very positive experience for everyone.

Thus, short term strategies like selling based on a largely fictional TCO reduction don't really work.

How IT Can Stay Relevant

Interesting discussion today about IT relevance in the modern cloud era:

http://gigaom.com/2013/03/31/technology-is-king-so-why-are-so-many-it-departments-playing-backseat-roles/?go_commented=1#comment-1324633

As pointed out in the comments section, this is definitely a topic that’s been discussed at length.

I would argue that the discussion goes back much farther than most realize. My first job in IT was part of a “shadow” IT organization. Our job was to help the business deploy technology that was readily available on the open market but that IT was not willing to provide for us.

Except that this was in 1989 and the technology was Macintosh computers.

As I wrote in my book "Why We Fail" this is part of a larger struggle between IT as a source of control for the organization and IT as a service provider. You cannot do both well.  In many cases, IT organizations feel it is their responsibility to control technology to protect the organization from it's internal users.  While this is a valid concern, it does not promote a culture of service that is required for IT to remain relevant.

I strongly believe that IT must transform into a customer centric model to help drive businesses forward.   Consider the chart below:

 

Traditional IT	Customer Centric IT
Sets IT Standards	Supports Business Requirements
Focus on Operations Excellence	Focus on Customer Satisfaction
Engineering is key skill set	Consulting is key skill set
Sets Policy	Seeks Input
Focus on Large Projects	Focus on Smaller Projects
Organized by Technology	Organized by Customer
Technology Focus	Business Value Focus
Delivers most projects in house	Brokers external vendors as needed

 

Customer centric IT organizations do not seek to set or enforce policy.  Rather, they seek input and they are organized around the customer.  It is the focus on the customer's needs that ensures that a customer focused IT organization will remain relevant in a modern cloud era.

Four Architectural Tenets

Similar to other IT functions, it can often be difficult to understand the value of IT architecture and to make the case for strong architectural practice.  When you add solutions as an additional layer of abstraction, this is even more difficult.  In one sense, you are getting further away from technology and therefore more theoretical.

However, in the case of solutions orientation, this added abstraction is done for a very pragmatic reason.  Solutions based engineering allows us to be closer to our end customer.  This is true whether you work in an IT organization or within a product group at a software company.  Our solutions orientation should make it simpler to show the business case for architecture, rather than harder.  Unfortunately, this is not true for many traditional Enterprise Architecture disciplines.  This is not to say that these disciplines have no value.  Not at all.  However, they are abstractions intended to help the technical team order complexity in a way that allows them to design a very complex system.  To the end user or customer, these complex systems are only of a passing interest.  Thus, like a hammer or a nail gun, they should be used only when necessary.  If the architecture framework is making your life as an architect better and allowing you to deliver solutions more quickly, then they’re good.  If they’re slowing you down, they’re bad.

If we are to claim that architecture has value, we need to establish the core tenets of what a "good" architecture is.  This is something that not all architects take into consideration when building projects or systems.  For example, speed of execution is just one benefit of the core architecture tenet I call Simplicity.  There are tons of different ways of expressing core tenets, but to me they all boil down to four basic tenets:

 

I like to express this as a Venn diagram because I feel that when I design something, there is a huge attack surface of any project.  However, the best design is a relatively small point where the Venn diagram overlaps.  Sometimes, it feels like the circles are the size of football fields and the overlap is the size of a postage stamp.  Being the eternal optimist, I insist that there must be an overlap someplace and that I just need to find it.

Core Architecture Tenets

 

·         Simplicity.  Simplicity of design is something than transcends IT.  By definition, the simplest solution that meets all the design criteria is the best design.  Complexity is the enemy.  This is true for many reasons (speed, maintenance, esthetics, etc.)

·         Alignment.   However, the solution needs to be aligned to the requirements of the business.  If the technical solution does not solve the stated problem, what’s the point?  You need to hit your requirements or the design is fundamentally flawed.

·         Quality.  Something that is done poorly is best not done at all.  It’s always easier to do something poorly.  However, I don’t think any of us actually aspire to produce poor results.  This is true for architecture just as it’s true for development or deployments.

·         Future Ready.  One thing we can be certain of in our business is change.  Whatever we build will need to be modified going forward.  Unlike things like cars, our designs will most likely be upgraded several times over their lifetimes.  Good architectures take this into account and allow for future changes.

The Death of Loyalty

In modern American business, the idea of loyalty is pretty much dead.

In years past, there was a sense that employees owed a certain amount of loyalty to the firm and in turn they expected this loyalty to be rewarded by security, advancement and compensation.  Companies would invest in their people through training and development activities that made those employees more valuable in the long term.

This virtuous cycle seems to be pretty much dead today.

In today's reality, certainly in the quickly changing high tech sector where I live, there is very little expectation that the company will "take care of you."  Yes, the probably will provide training but usually that training is focused on short term goals.  There are very few companies in Silicon Valley today who make a sincere effort to develop their technical people and actively manage their careers.

I started my career in an "Old Fashioned" company that had all the traditional trappings of employee development.  Because of this, I benefited in the type of developmental planning and support so crucial to help junior technical people enter the workforce.  Later in my career I actually ran a large professional developmental program designed to create Architects from engineers.

Today, as I look around and consult with my peers, these programs are markedly absent.  I am aware of no major Silicon Valley companies actively developing Architects within their organizations. 

BTW, I would love to be wrong here.  Please let me know in the comments if you're aware of any company doing this kind of work.

So, if this type of development isn't being done by our employers, how are we going to develop ourselves and the next generation of architects?

I've come to the realization that we must do this ourselves.  It is only through community that we can address this problem.  This is one reason why I decided to start writing books.  Not that I think my books will move an industry but rather that I need to share my experiences and learning's.  If one person is helped by this then I feel the effort of putting ideas down on paper was useful.

I have also recently been trolling the Linkedin universe to see if this is a good place for this type of professional development.  As of what I see today, the signal to noise ratio is just too high there to be useful.  Linkedin, as a platform, is awesome for keeping tabs on what everyone is doing and I love it for that purpose.  However, as a learning tool, it's too uncontrolled and too open to be useful.  What's needed here is curation.  A hiking trail that says "start here and end there."

Again, to my knowledge such a thing does not exist.  I definitely welcome postings in the comments section telling me how incredibly wrong I am!

In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to think about how you are helping the Architects in your organization develop.  Mentoring and OJT are our only options right now and that requires effort for those of us already in the profession.