One of the enduring myths about software architecture and in general technology leadership is the degree of control an architect has.
Our advocates believe we walk into a room, draw a picture, everyone listens to us and then code materializes.
And I have worked in places like that. Teams willingly were lead off a cliff.
I remember a time at NetApp where a team just wanted me to draw the picture. And I did and then projects got spun up and engineers got assigned. And then I left because that’s not the way I work.
The best teams don’t work that way.
The best teams draw the picture for you and you evaluate if the picture makes sense.
What you want is people to be passionate and believe in their solution. And only very rarely is what they are proposing wrong. Most of the time it’s good enough.
And so my job is to find out how to nudge them away from potential disasters.
Sometimes it can be exasperating because it’s not the picture you want drawn. And sometimes the picture is a compromise between organizations and not the best software. And there is always someone smart enough to point out the better picture that no one had any passion for.
And then they look at me as a failure, because isn’t my job to build the best possible system and force it down my teams throat?
And the answer is almost never.
The job is to have product that can evolve to be the best product it can be. And to do that you need a committed team. And a committed great team will always produce great software even if the picture isn’t exactly what you would have drawn.
Because drawing the picture – ironically – is almost never the job.
Maybe we should stop calling folks like you “architects” then. Architects in the construction industry DEFINITELY draw pictures, and are usually not too interested in contributions by the carpenters to said picture drawing. 🙂
Great post! I think the mileage varies on this one though. Having been an architect at NetApp for some time, I can only say – dang Kostadis, you must have had some true magic in those markers!!! I have found though-out my career that the picture is essential form of communication to attain alignment, and more often than not – I’m the one drawing it. That’s not to say that all the concepts that it depicts originated from my brain however. The picture is an amalgamation of ideas imagined by the team – presented in a cohesive way – an architecture. Steve Jobs once said “it doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” I subscribe to that. We hire brilliant people – with brilliant ideas – who know their focus areas better than I do. As an architect, my job is to bring the wholistic view and coordinate the brilliance. Part of that coordination is drawing the picture.
Yeah – I do have a follow up post about when you have to pick the marker up and draw. And you nailed it with this: “. The picture is an amalgamation of ideas imagined by the team – presented in a cohesive way – an architecture.” I feel my post will be 1000 or so words repeating that sentence.