The Politics of Design

The health industry tells me that I should eat more fish to increase my intake of omega-3 fatty acids (whatever those are).  The environmental people tell me that factory fish farms are horrible polluters.  The Discovery Channel tells me that the natural fisheries are over-fished and some species are dangerously close to being wiped-out.  Or... maybe it's the other way around.  I don't know.  As a consumer of this information, it seems to me that I'm getting contradictory advice.  Should I eat fish or no?  Farm-raised or not?  The answers are not simple.  There are different angles to consider, and none of these sources give you the a complete picture.

As an IT department, we are giving our business partners advice from a variety of sources.  The line developers advise the business users.  The project managers do, too.  The business analyst, the architect, the department managers all talk to the business partners and all try to provide helpful advice.  Are your business partners getting consistent messages that considers all facets of the situation or are they confused by what seem to be contradictory information from different groups?  I bet you know the answer...

If you've been serving as an architect in your organization for very long, you are probably being asked a dozen times a week to predict the future.  "When can we expect better performance from these queries?"  "How many times will we re-use that component over the next 2-3 years?"  "What will be the strategic direction of that application platform in 2010?"

With all the technology tools that we have at our disposal -- the software packages, the industry best practices, the arsenal of fully-baked design patterns -- there are still days when I sit in my office chair and wish for the two tools that I really need: a crystal ball and a lucky rabbit's foot.  How in the world can we be expected to accurately predict the direction of our organization, the challenges that we will face, and the methods we'll use to overcome them?  As architect's are we supposed to be clairvoyant?  Are we supposed to be able to repeatedly and accurately predict the future?   We are not only expected to do this, we actually can do it.