Enterprise Architecture: Crisis as a Best Practice...

In my tenure at The Hartford, I have known of only one enterprise application that has never had an unplanned outage. Sadly, this application was rationalized away...



Let's face it, we live in a culture of perception management and in order to thrive it is best to embrace heroism over engineering. The Architect who flies in and saves the day will in most cultures be rewarded more than the one who is disciplined, doesn't partake in cargo cults and simply does his job through technical excellence and demonstrated ability.

So, I believe it is in the best interest of IT professionals to sometimes not do things right the first time! Increasingly, I believe that even if you had the foresight to prevent an enterprise application from future outages and the potential for lost revenue and otherwise sunk cost that goes with it, you should hang back a little.

Ever notice the behavior of most IT executives when an enterprise application is down for an extended period? While we can't possibly get the right resources or an appropriate budget while building an application, they somehow manage to clear all the hurdles whether it is a stifling governance process, suboptimal IT employees who are in the way or simply allowing architects and developers to practice their craft, we can pull off magic during a crisis.

Code somehow during periods of crisis seem to get written of a higher quality and at half the time than during normal periods. So, how does an enterprise leverage this simple truth? Create a few crisis and take advantage of every failure.

If IT were 100% perfect and had zero outages, someone would immediately start brainstorming ways to tamper with it. After all, perfection isn't a goal and in the minds of many may be a predictor of not enough efficiency. The process weenies love to devise schemes where people are over-utilized and chaos ensues. Many IT shops are efficient but few are effective.

In many corporations I have worked that have embarked on IT outsourcing to India, the end result has been a net reduction in the availability of enterprise applications yet outsourcing continues to thrive. The onshore model involved a few talented individuals working a problem to resolution while outsourcing has brought many best practices where we need to coordinate dozens if not hundreds of people in different timezones and skillsets to resolve a problem.

When things are broken, usually from the ashes a hero emerges where the business is happy for anyone contributing a potential solution no matter how far fetched it may be. Crisis has allowed for IT to acquire many performance testing tools that otherwise would have gotten shot down at budget time. Crisis has also allowed for many more non-technical IT employees to remain employed working on various but otherwise neboulous practices that are under the guise of reducing future events.

More importantly, crisis in many cultures allows for developers to get the opportunity to refactor code. As an Agilist, we know that time and hindsight affords us the opportunity to find better ways of developing working software. Likewise, we know that developers never get to make things better and are constantly working on the next thing. The only thing that allows most waterfall enterprises to be agile is crisis which affords the opportunity to mercilessly refactor...

The American educational system can benefit from India Best Practices...

The American educational system is fundamentally busted. One idea that I would like to propose is to send 100,000 elementary and high school teachers to India to learn a few practices that Indian outsourcing firms leverage...



We need to rethink education completely. As it stands, vendors such as Cognizant, Wipro, Virtusa and so on based on sound margins from labor arbitrage found a way to retrain massively people from any career into relevant careers. They have found ways to sell deals to American CIOs without necessarily having the experience.

Independent of any competencies or lack of, they have figured out ways to train people in very cost effective ways. If a CIO wanted 10,000 people to be immediately trained up on the latest version of Java, the Indian firms have figured out how to at least get them to a level of proficiency (this is distinct from mastery) in a way that allows them to hit the deadlines.

While Americans are savagely focused on experience, India is busy giving freshers a chance. Governments and parents pony up dozens of thousands of dollars per child, and students are advised to focus on studying and not working, which has a high opportunity cost. What can we learn from India...

Myers Briggs: What type of personality are you?

I am what is labeled as an INTJ: - The Scientists...

The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it - often with a highly creative and imaginative touch. They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be physically hesitant to try new things.

The Scientists enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communicating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use concrete examples. Since they are extremely good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone.