Architect's Core Values:
Tenacity – Never stop trying:
I can think of no better value to follow courage than tenacity. Courage moves someone from instinct to action but tenacity is the desire to keep on standing.
I have yet to see an IT shop of any size where influencing others was not a core part of an architect’s job. Influence brings compromise at times where, even though your 100% confident the approach you advocate is the best approach to take, the stakeholders will take a different path. Your stakeholders may even take on this Lucy-esque appearance when the next challenge arises and you line up to kick the ball…just one more time Charlie Brown! Loosing several battles in a row can deflate anyone.
Well, suck it up! It’s part of the gig and part of being an architect. You’re permitted to deal with temporary disappointment when the cards don’t fall the way you envisioned but you have to remember that success is measured in inches, not miles and by months or years, not days.
Acting in the best interest of the company and its systems is a delicate balancing act. Architects, like the development team, want to delight the business with the features they need when they need it but they also have to look further out and consider the sustainability of the system and anticipate future demands of the business.
Tenaciousness is required in all architects. Regardless of their area of focus, architects face significant time and cost challenges on solution delivery. Building it the architecturally sound way will frequently be prioritized below time to market and lower cost solutions. The reality is delivering the best solution for the business takes a balance of influences from project management, the delivery team AND the architecture team.
Architecture influence is a required element in ALL successful solutions. However, architecture influence generally isn’t the main ingredient and, in some rare cases, the solution will only contain trace amounts.
Tenacity is difficult to coach because there are no pre-described guidelines or formulaic equations to determine when standing resolute is a good idea but three guidelines are outlined below to help guide the development of this essential value.
1 - Use Logic - Don’t confuse tenacity for stubbornness:
A tenacious architect comes to a discussion, listens and advocates a sustainable approach even if this approach was bypassed previously. A stubborn architect advocates the same approach regardless of the differences in the current project and the last just because they seem similar. Architects should let pragmatism be their friend and use common sense to determine the degree of architectural influence that needs to be applied to the solution.
2 - Tenacity is NOT about who wins:
Listen carefully to problem-solving discussions. Are your architects and developers trying to deliver the best solution possible or are they trying to win the argument? Getting emotionally engaged in any discussion is easy if you are in the discussion and easy to spot if you are an observer. If you find you’re getting too emotionally engaged in a debate (or witness someone else too emotionally engaged) use some data or fact to diffuse the emotion and remain pragmatically centered.
3 - Pick your battles - Bend but don’t break:
If you’ve outlined some logical reasons why the architecturally sound approach will cost less over the long term and used some data from actual production situations to diffuse “red herring” attempts to win an emotional battle, you’ll need to take stock in your position. Is this a battle worth fighting? Worth escalation? If it is…push for the appropriate solution as hard as possible, build support with your management team but most importantly, understand your minimum success criteria so the solution can move forward without determent and if it does fall below the minimal success criteria, be prepared to articulate the tangible and intangible costs of doing so.
Business is not linear. One day you’re focusing on projects to gain market share, the next to improve operational efficiencies but your architectural values are part of your DNA.
Do you agree with this architectural value? Are there other guidelines you advocate?
photo: Tenacity
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