The Politics of Design

Refine the art of the workaround - Finding the balance between water and concrete.

Yes, I need to exercise more and yes I need to eat better but this year I am going to try something...well...different (No, not skinny jeans - “thank goodness” say my co-workers) but something that may get me thrown out of the Architect’s Club - WORKAROUNDS.

I spend most of my work-hours influencing others to follow ‘standard approaches’ and ‘prescribed practices’. My teams are responsible for reuse, structure and governance. You’ll find these all over our blog.

However, one art form I have grappled with my entire career is achieving the perfect balance between maximizing *sustainable* forward progress while maintaining the minimal level of structure/control.

In other words, drive the car around the corner at maximum speed without losing control. If you take all corners with great caution in order to guarantee you’ll finish all races, you probably won’t win any. That may be important if the race you are in has other lives on the line (think healthcare) but if you are a startup, the only way to survive (win the race) is take risks.

With experience, you’ll get very good at navigating these corners especially if you’re dealing with some constant parameters. The reality is, life and business are much more dynamic than a car race. You hit obstacles on a daily basis and how you react to the obstacles is the difference between long term success and failure of your IT systems (and maybe your career).

Schools teach one correct way to solve a problem. One solution that will receive maximum points on a test. However, once you enter the real world, you’ll find there are multiple ways of being successful.

Enter Russell Bishop’s new book: Workarounds that work.
Blog Post and Book.

The book is not available yet but what I liked about this post (and hopefully the book) is:
He advocates to find a solution to keep making progress. Too many times I see defeatist attitudes when something does not go the way someone envisioned. They refuse to try again because it did not work the last time.

He advocates choice, as in, you choose how you react to a situation. If you think of something as impossible, it will be, if you chose to push for change, you will probably find a way to make it work. Some IT folk feel they don’t have a choice because they don’t think outside the box appropriately. i.e. the business asked for an estimate in 3 days so my only choice is to hack it in. In most organizations, you have a choice to appropriately push back and find acceptable workaround.

Now, you could easily read my post or Russell’s post/book and twist it the wrong way. As I said in the beginning, I want to find the balance between “water” (path of least resistance-treat everything as a workaround) and “concrete” (every solution must be rigid-never leverage a workaround).

At times a quick fix is necessary and sometimes, you’ll need to push for a more robust solution. How to know what workaround is acceptable? Well, here are a couple reference points.

Poor excuse for a workaround: A crooked road line doesn’t ruin the road but c’mon!!! Take 2 seconds and move the branch for goodness sake!!!

A workaround is absolutely critical: Apollo 13. Maybe one of the greatest examples of ingenuity and workarounds ever seen. Lives were on the line. They had to find a solution and did.


Well, that’s a wrap, so here’s to an awesome, 2011 with fewer obstacles and greater success, but when I encounter the roadblocks that life sends my way, i’ll test out my new pragmatic workaround philosophy.

Have resolutions to share?