Recently, a coworker of mine approached me and said, “All you have to do is figure out what the final right answer is.”
And I stared at him, and I was surprised at how ridiculous the comment sounded.
I turned to him and I said, “anyone can do that!”
In fact, it was at that point in time that I realized how little I understood what the nature of system architecture is. Figuring out how to build the correct answer is the least interesting part. Figuring out how to build the next part, while giving you optionality to build the correct solution later is the real job.
The job is to see what is being done today, understand where you want to go, and course correct efforts that are going in the wrong direction.
System architecture lives between the now, and perfect future, an area of complete grey. And the challenge is in that gray area; there are no correct answers.
The Minbari Grey Council is a perfect metaphor. Their job was to stand before the now, and the future that they knew was coming and making the hard choices. That space between the now and the future was unclear and uncertain. And they chose, when confronted with the future, to not make a choice.
The job of the system architect, is to know when the right thing to do is to break the Grey Council and when it is not.
The challenge for the system architect is that when you see a project that is going off the rails, you need to understand how much you need to get involved. Is this a project that if it succeeds will take the company in the new wrong direction? Or is this an effort that will open new opportunities that currently don’t exist? The height of hubris is to assume you know the answer. But to do nothing, is to say yes to everything.
Ultimately system architecture is a reflection of the taste of the architect. And like fake turning machines, not all taste is correct all problems.
The challenge, is to understand when you were taste is getting in the way of new opportunity and when your taste is telling you that something is going wrong.
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