Technology exists to serve organizations and people. Or it should. Unfortunately it seems like it can take on a life of its own, serving itself--turning developers into servants of technology ends, rather than environmental, organizational and human ends. When IT has a very narrow interface with the business, with sparse and highly gated dialog between customer-facing business people and the development teams that are presumed to serve them, then we have to wonder what is truly being served--organizational ends or technology ends? My sensitivity here is raised because we're asked, from time to time, to help architects "persuade" stakeholders, rather than to create solutions that, through fit to purpose and to context, create a legacy of resonance between IT and the business. We need to recognize that we are in the age of relationships and informed high expectations, not in the age of heavy selling to a gullible audience. Influence without stakeholder understanding and alignment is using psychology to manipulate; to serve the agenda of IT rather than the agenda of the business. Yes, persuasion and influence are important skills, but in the ethical context of serving the organization rather than manipulating to serve an organizationally subversive agenda. If I'm told architects don't need to know how to create value, only how to persuade, my sensors go on red alert! Architects aren't salesmen in an age of product push, but rather partners with the business in an age of customer pull. Besides:

"...truly effective innovation needs to integrate choices about customers, finance, and technology; without buy-in at the outset from all these groups, choices made upstream may be undone downstream."

-- Zia Khan and Jon Katzenbach, Are You Killing Enough Ideas?, strategy+business, August 2009

01/02/10 Leadership and The Brain

Cross-disciplinary work doesn't just yield breakthroughs in products and technology, but science too. The integration of psychology (the study of the human mind and human behavior) and neuroscience (the study of the anatomy and physiology of the brain), is delivering all kinds of insights into human behavior, sometimes confirming intuitions we already had and sometimes upsetting existing theories. For example:

"Matthew Lieberman notes that Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” theory may have been wrong in this respect. Maslow proposed that humans tend to satisfy their needs in sequence, starting with physical survival and moving up the ladder toward self-actualization at the top. In this hierarchy, social needs sit in the middle. But many studies now show that the brain equates social needs with survival; for example, being hungry and being ostracized activate similar neural responses."

and:

"when leaders make people feel good about themselves, clearly communicate their expectations, give employees latitude to make decisions, support people’s efforts to build good relationships, and treat the whole organization fairly, it prompts a reward response. Others in the organization become more effective, more open to ideas, and more creative. They notice the kind of information that passes them by when fear or resentment makes it difficult to focus their attention. They are less susceptible to burnout because they are able to manage their stress. They feel intrinsically rewarded.'

-- David Rock, Managing with the Brain in Mind, strategy+business, August 2009

I will be putting Rock's scarf on architects' survival gear checklist. :-)  (Scarf stands for the five social qualities--namely status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness--that a leader should be aware of when leading any change.)

In a related, but earlier paper titled The Neuroscience of Leadership, Rock and co-author Jeffrey Schwartz, discuss 3 powerful change levers: "focus is power"; "expectation shapes reality"; and "attention density shapes identity."

In "expectation shapes reality," we have more confirmation for intuition (we know this as "self-fulfilling prophecy" and "What we are paying attention to shapes what we pay attention to," for example):

"Cognitive scientists are finding that people’s mental maps, their theories, expectations, and attitudes, play a more central role in human perception than was previously understood. This can be well demonstrated by the placebo effect. Tell people they have been administered a pain-reducing agent and they experience a marked and systematic reduction in pain, despite the fact that they have received a completely inert substance, a sugar pill. One study in 2005 by Robert C. Coghill and others found that “expectations for decreased pain produce a reduction in perceived pain (28.4%) that rivals the effects of a clearly analgesic dose of morphine.” Donald Price of the University of Florida has shown that the mental expectation of pain relief accounts for the change in pain perception. The brain’s deepest pain centers show systematic changes consistent with changes in experienced pain."

Turning insight into informed action, the authors suggest:

"How, then, would you go about facilitating change? The impact of mental maps suggests that one way to start is by cultivating moments of insight. Large-scale behavior change requires a large-scale change in mental maps. This in turn requires some kind of event or experience that allows people to provoke themselves, in effect, to change their attitudes and expectations more quickly and dramatically than they normally would."

-- David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz, The Neuroscience of Leadership, strategy+business, May 2006

In the section titled "attention density shapes identity," there are insights for individuals looking to develop themselves, as well as leaders and coaches or trainers:

"For insights to be useful, they need to be generated from within, not given to individuals as conclusions. This is true for several reasons. First, people will experience the adrenaline-like rush of insight only if they go through the process of making connections themselves. The moment of insight is well known to be a positive and energizing experience.

...

It is far more effective and efficient to help others come to their own insights. Accomplishing this feat requires self-observation. Adam Smith, in his 1759 masterpiece The Theory of Moral Sentiments, referred to this as being “the spectators of our own behaviour.”

...

With enough attention density, individual thoughts and acts of the mind can become an intrinsic part of an individual’s identity: who one is, how one perceives the world, and how one’s brain works."

-- David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz, The Neuroscience of Leadership, strategy+business, May 2006

The bottom line there, apparently, is: keep a journal. :-) That aligns with advice Gerald Weinberg gives in Becoming a Technical Leader.

1/2/10 Gerald Weinberg Keeps Inspiring Us!

Looking up the link to Jerry's site, I was disturbed to find he has "fatal" thymic carcinoma. The quotes are Gerald's; generally the prognosis is not good. This is a good time to test "expectation shapes reality" and fully expect a return to health for Jerry! If you want to help him feel better, you could always buy one of his eNovels (proceeds go to charity). I have high expectations, given his superb books on systems thinking, technical leadership and consulting. :-) 

Reading through the entries in the guestbook, this one drew a tear:

'[5 year old] Dmitry tugs at my sleeve and says to me "Mommy, when I feel stress, I just pretend like I'm happy and then I am.  Tell them that, Mommy."'  -- Tina Lipert, December 29, 2009

Why did it make me tear up? Well, I guess hearing about Jerry made me vulnerable to it, but the direct reason was that neither my son nor many software developers I've encountered, practice that simple and hugely effective philosophy! Think how much suffering people could be saved from inflicting on themselves if they just focused on being happy? We don't choose to be born, and we generally don't choose how and when we lose loved ones or die, but there's a whole lot in between where we shape our state by what we choose to think and how we choose to be. Yes, over the course of our lives there's hard stuff we have to deal with. Still, Jerry's wheelchair workout says a huge amount about his attitude even under the enormous emotional load of a gut-wrenching, mind-spinning diagnosis. But, if you find yourself in a situation and can't cheer yourself up, this (by way of another post on Jerry's guestbook) would hopefully do it: I love xkcd. Well, goodness, I love xkcd/Randall Munroe teamed up with Olga Nunes and Noam Raby! Grin.

And here's the Discovery ad ("the world is just awesome" boom-de-ah-dah) that Randall's xkcd "I love the Discovery Channel" comic strip was reportedly based on.

1/21/10: Remember that placebo effect--what we think we experience is a powerful shaper of what we actually experience. So, if we think we are happy, then we are happy. And if we think our peers are smart, well-rounded... it is easy to dismiss this as so much pop-psyche mumbo-jumbo, but the further science roots around here, the more we discover that there's some pretty simple stuff that makes effective people so.

01/02/10 What is Architecture About?

Some graphic notes I jotted down... they should be redrawn, but that's not gonna happen any time soon (so much to do!)... so:

We may think and want architecture to be about technically challenging mechanism design, or even system decomposition (abstraction, separation of concerns, balanced responsibilities, etc.), and definition of system boundaries and relationships. Indeed, these are the focus of definitions of software architecture, and the focus of much architectural practice. However, if architecture is to enable right system built right, it is first about understanding the context (business, use and environmental context), so that we can create fit to context and to purpose. And, in many cases, it is about taking into account the range of contexts of use, and range of infrastructure environments that will be part of it's system context.

1/3/10 Fractal Strategy

I used some glorious fractal images from the Mandelbrot set on wikipedia for a slide series on fractal strategy. Here's a preview of some of the slides:

The usual push-back we get when we raise the topic of strategy among architects is that it is irrelevant: "I don't have any influence on strategy, because execs don't talk to me"... or something along those lines.

But strategy is set at many levels, from product to corporate. Indeed, it may not even be set at the top-most level, and only be a rolling up of the effective strategy (whether emergent or intentionally set) at the product and service level. (Emergent or intentional--sound familiar?)

Of course we don't want, or expect, every aspect of the business to be self-similar, so we need to be careful where we take the metaphor. Still, strategy is a mechanism for business leaders to create coherence of purpose and identity, and to create synergies that give a corporate giant advantages over small competitors. To achieve this alignment, business strategy is interpreted--elaborated, refined and translated into the domain of focus--through the different avenues of more and more granular strategy setting (business unit, portfolio, product family, product or service).

The architect is ideally included in strategy setting at the architect's level of scope--a product architect should be involved in setting product strategy, interpreting the corporate strategy in product terms, and laying out the competitive gameplan for the product. If the architect is not, then chances are good that the chasm between strategy setting and system design will mean that the true strategy will be emergent--too many downstream decisions will be made without deep strategic context. The translation of business strategy into technical strategy and system design is one of the most strategic inflection points, because it determines what gets to market. Strategy articulates value propositions that will differentiate the business (at the business level) or product (at the product level) in the market. Intentional architecture interprets, refines and elaborates those value propositions, determining and realizing system capabilities that enable the organization to execute its strategic intent.    

Background fractal image attribution: wikipedia Mandelbrot set; created under the GNU Free Documentation License and available for use under the Creative Commons License with attribution.

Well, even if you don't like the fractal metaphor, you surely like the images?! :-)

1/3/10 Consider this a Chocolate Frog!

Just one month to go, and this Journal will turn FOUR! Goodness that time has passed in a blink! Apologizing for some tardiness, I emailed a colleague saying "time ran through my fingers today even more quickly than other days." But... I'm finding the flight of time only accelerates!  

Thanks to all of you who (like me) spend precious minutes of precious days here, hoping to unravel the mysteries that will enhance effectiveness in our field... or at least find a pointer to something that draws a smile. You could, of course, just stop by xkcd of your own accord, and shortcut this trace. :-) But... are you keeping up with Dilbert? This one's sure to be useful throughout the year--so nice of Scott Adams to start the year with it! While you're at it, you might want to add this one to your "to DUF or not to DUF" set...

This morning, Dana pointed out a cute bumper sticker that read:

"God, please make me the person my dog thinks I am"

I told him I'd change it to:

"God, please make me the person my blog thinks I am"

Dana about hit the curb, he laughed so much.

Hmmmpf! I get no respect! And no thanks. ;-)  [Charlie and Daniel excepted, of course. You do realize that Charlie and Daniel are convinced they are the only readers, even if I say there were over 15,000 "unique visitors" to this site in 2009--that being the year I put a lid on this journal for a few months! ("Unique" only means within a month, so the actual number of unique visitors is obviously a lot less, given all the return visits across the months. Right... Grin.)] 

As you prepare to celebrate the 4th anniversary of my Trace, remember: If you want to rave about my journal, I can be reached using the obvious traceinthesand.com handle. If you want to rant, its ruth@traceinthesand.ru.cz.

Or not. There's always next year (assuming no calamity strikes). And it'll be here in less than a blink!

What do I mean by chocolate frog? Oh right, there's some history there: introducing the notion of eating frogs; and why chocolate: eat that frog and chocolate frogs. Ok, if you really want a chocolate frog, I'll need your mailing address. Well, I should tell you that Whitney (whose voice you'll know if you've called our office) makes delectable chocolate truffles.

Hey, I see a business opportunity--a chocolate frog factory to serve all the (spouses and assistants of) procrastinators out there (and in here)! Just--don't tell Whitney, because we need her. :-)

1/4/10: As for my view of the important role what we project plays, you doubtless (grin) remember the poem I shared here.

1/3/10 The Company He Keeps!

I stopped over at Grady Booch's blog for a technical update/intellectual boost/snippet of humor/whatever... again no new entries (sad sigh), but stopping there reminded me of a quote he'd used, and I started reading down the quotes he foots each entry with. I'd never done that--just scanned across the span of time, hopping from quote to quote. I have to say, he selects great company!

In this moment, I especially like this:

"Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs." -- Christopher Morley

Putting myself at some mental distance from my own self, I often find that in that jumbling, life/the universe/God/fate reveals such a sense of humor--with me as clown at center stage! :-)

I also like this:

"Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose." -- Zora Neale Hustron

(Aside: It makes me think there's a parallel aphorism along the lines of: Invention is the realization of fantasy. It is dreaming and scheming with a purpose. Add research, and it really gets interesting. Grin.)  

Naturally Grady is a font of maxims and vivid turn of phrase himself. I love this from a really early entry:

"I would contend that there are few truly novel software architectures. Rather, as with every engineering discipline, new systems or modified ones are [built] upon the shoulders and ashes of previous ones." 

-- Grady Booch, blog entry January 27, 2004

The shoulders and ashes! That's such a great way of putting it--contrast it with the alternative of successes and failures!

And right when I wrote that, Grady posted! So, he timed that well. :-)

1/5/10: In an unrelated moment, Dana pointed me to the 23 Funniest Quotes of the Decade. Oh don't worry Georgie, everyone's always misunderestimating me too. :-)

1/7/10: Really early entry? Like bx! bx? You know, x as in xkcd--the deity of our nerdverse.

1/3/10 Writing as Unique as a Fingerprint

Last month when Jane quoted:

"The venerable cities of the past, such as Venice or Amsterdam, convey a feeling of wholeness, an organic unity that surfaces in every detail, large and small, in restaurants, shops, public gardens, even in balconies and ornaments. But this sense of wholeness is lacking in modern urban design, with architects absorbed in problems of individual structures, and city planners preoccupied with local ordinances, it is almost impossible to achieve."

Dana and I were both sure it was from a book by Christopher Alexander, but weren't sure immediately which one. So Dana searched "The venerable cities of the past" thinking the book in question would be among the first search results, but not expecting all the results (only 8 at that point) to relate to the same book, namely A New Theory of Urban Design. Who would think "The venerable cities of the past" would be so unique a turn of phrase? It just seems so natural and right, it would have to show up on multiple sites, and multiple texts, surely? But, no.

Which launched us into a discussion of how unique our expression is! For example, if I Google "how unique our expression is" there are no search results (for the exact match)! Imagine--when last Google posted a claim of pages indexed, it was considerably in excess of 8 billion pages! And I'm the first to write "how unique our expression is"! Of course, I already checked on "upon the shoulders and ashes"--only Grady's site comes up. Well, if you read this tomorrow, perhaps mine will too. It's called riding on shirt tails--or the shoulders of giants. What makes Grady's phrase work so well, is that it draws on literary idiom giving it depth, but is fresh and unique. 

1/3/10 An Open Declaration of the Meaning of Open?   

• The Meaning of Open, Jonathan Rosenberg, Google Blog, December 21, 2009

Since I read McCarthy's Dynamics of Software Development long, long before I started journaling here, you probably haven't heard me rave about it (there's likely still some residue in the SAW binder, which you'd have come across if you'd read all the notes; grin). In it, Jim is not only immensely insightful, but he coined some phrases that have become part of the lingua franca of our field--for good reason! "Don't flip the bozo bit" is one piece of solid advice framed in characteristically memorable McCarthy color! It is a recognition of the binary tendencies we have in our software field (and possibly elsewhere; I just haven't worked in other fields). It is different from, but derives from the same sort of insight that Lincoln expressed when he said "I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."  

The wikipedia entry on the bozo bit is interesting! What history our field has!

"At the time, it's fair to say that most coders still thought of themselves as technology experts first, team members second. The technical issues facing programmers were sufficiently daunting that just getting code written was commonly considered good enough; McCarthy and other authors (Lister & DeMarco, Constantine, McConnell) were just breaking the news that social issues trump technical ones on almost every project."  -- wikipedia

And how we are doomed to repeat history! "At the time"; "breaking news"? Goodness, we're still trying to educate the field that code is not the grail, value is the grail and value is a complex conjoint balance of stakeholder concerns and goals, technology capabilities and issues, organizational capabilities and concerns, and market forces and dynamics. Given that complexity, we are dealing with considerable cognitive distance (thanks Charlie Alfred) and often associated dissonance. Flipping the bozo bit is a way of shutting down, of simplifying. But so much possibility is shut out at the same time!

Well, yeah, some people are bozos... and some people are killers. But we hopefully don't work with any of them!

1/4/10 Oops--Server Error!

Just for the record--staples.com is down and has been for at least an hour... on Monday, January 4 when everyone wants to restock! Why keep track? Well, I always kick myself when I don't keep tabs on these nice little examples to draw lessons from!

I did keep track of this error on Etsy:

Its an error message but I titled the image file "EtsyLuv"!

Not architecturally significant? You obviously didn't read this.  :-)

Ah, that enthusiasm fountain! Found it yet? Well, tell, tell! I lost my reserves in a cave of silence somewhere...

I need to find the person who was writing in my journal back in September--she was much more fun! ...maybe...

As for fridge magnet wisdom, we have one (from England) that says: "I child-proofed the house--but they're still getting back in." Drat! We have another (also from England) that says "Chocolate is proof that Gods loves us."

1/4/10 Principles

It occurred to me that I should change our Principles template to say Counter Forces instead of Counterargument. Look, I'm sorry I misled you. Ok, it took me more than 11 years to realize the field name was wrong. That makes me really dim-witted! ...you knew that... sigh... But, hey, at least I'm not so fossilized I can't change my mind! Grin. Ok, now that I've persuaded all potential new readers not to pay any attention to me, I can proceed to the point. ;-)

The point is that a principle is worth stating as an Architectural Principle if it changes strategically impactful decisions/behaviors. To change behavior, there must be something that is driving the old behavior--that's a counter-force. Then we have the principle name (catchy!) and its statement (to align decisions/behaviors), its rationale (connecting the dots to strategic intent), and counter-forces (what pressures may form against it, as well as whatever drove the status quo) and implications (what do we need to put in place, to live by the principle). That's what I've always meant. It feels good to have the right name land--at last!

The name of a thing matters so much!

So, onward...

1/4/10 Collaboration--Doing it Wright!

Alright, alright, I'm not suggesting you move in with your team. Grin. Still, the Wright brothers had a synergy that is hard to replicate.

I was so impressed by the two posters on the Wright brothers at the Museum of Science and Industry--in just a few sparse paragraphs so much was conveyed about their collaborative process, a childhood that bred curiosity and experiment, and their business savvy. These inventors first set about getting patents to protect their inventions, then aggressively marketed them--including doing a stunt flight around the White House.

Not relevant in software? Well, how about those Rasmussen brothers?

1/4/09 Museums and Hanging Out Over Chicago (Literally!)

I looked at going to the US Virgin Islands last week, but it was going to be raining all week. So I looked at Costa Rica, but the kids would have had to miss some school to get the flight costs down. I wouldn't worry about a few days ordinarily, but their class (ages 9-12) is putting on As We Like It and I didn't think it fair for the kids to get behind on rehearsals and potentially lose their roles. We ended up being "rational" (hard for me, I'm afraid; life's too short!) and going to Chicago. Ryan was there on a school field trip earlier in December and he wanted to show us around. We had a great time, which totally surprised me! I never think of going to cities when I'm taking time off! I love art museums, but the kids get really obnoxious... None of us liked the Field--nothing wrong with the museum; it was just insanely crowded. The glass floored window boxes at the top of the Willis Tower (more famously known as the Sears Tower) were a rush (you get a quite different perspective hanging out on a piece of glass jutting out from near the top of the 5th tallest building in the world)! We did the behind-the-scenes tour at the Shedd Aquarium and Ryan showed off his fish knowledge and was offered a (volunteer) job.  The Museum of Science and Industry enthralled us all! And eating at Udupi Palace was a highlight. It sure made me miss The Empress of India in the Bay Area (though last time we were there, we were sad to find it had closed). Anyway, here's a postcard from Chicago.

1/4/10 Someone nice said thanks... for the other site I write

"Site Content is very good and I congratulate them for the excellent work"

-- Freddy P., Bredemeyer mailing list signup, 1/4/10

Well, that ought to feed my ego for another month or six. :-)   It won't, but it ought to. ;-)

1/5/10 Just ...Because We Can!

The architect of the world's tallest building (Burj Dubai or Dubai Tower) talking (briefly) about the dominant design forces.     

Artitect (art+architect) Adam Tucker built a Lego model of the Burj Dubai, which we saw in the Museum of Science and Industry. Here's some telling metrics:

"The design took me 3 weeks, figuring out the parts needed 1 week, study sections & scale models 4 weeks, construction 6 weeks." -- Adam Tucker, MOC blog, January 30, 2009

I just snapped that in passing, so the resolution isn't good enough to read the sign. Sorry! Can someone stop by and let me know the hours--it looks like 280 hours for design and 340 hours for construction...

Talk about BDUF! ;-)

Burj Dubai and Avatar, two great pinnacles of imagination and achievement marking our first decade of this millennium. (Well, Burj Dubai was unveiled yesterday, but it was built in the last decade. :-)

1/5/10 Skiff Looks Nifty!

Daniel Stroe pointed me to the Skiff eReader and also mentioned the growing rumors around an Apple reader. Both Apple and Kindle have a legacy of community-alienating closedness in key areas... I got over my AT&T lock-in bug-bear, but not giving me control over my own annotations is a still a hurdle with the Kindle.    

The ecosystem is so important, but I wouldn't want to disregard product features... Ok, in terms of a reader, here's what I want:

• audio and text (so I can listen but drop into text because it is easier to go back over a point I really want to pay attention to in text; also, see my next point) [Kindle is experimenting with this.]
• the ability to highlight and annotate/jot notes in situ (ability to draw sketches with a stylus in the margin or a drop-in page would be nice) [Kindle has type in annotations, but see next point]
• the ability to keep a backup of my book with its annotations on media I control (I pay for the right to a copy of the book, and my notes are my IP, and indeed, my overflow brain!), preferably in an open format
• the ability to share annotations with "friends" in a reading circle (create a reading circle around a book, and push out annotations to "friends" who subscribe to the circle, or a friend circle I create from my contacts, etc.)

Now all I need is someone to point me to some cool visualization stuff, and my day will really be sunk! Earlier Dana pointed me to the USC Systems Architecting courses, and when I tunneled down there I got depressed! I mean, don't get me wrong, I get to work with many, many wonderful architects... but also some who just do not see the value in a challenge like this:

"Engagement: Much of the learning, and hopefully, the pleasure, of this course is simply showing up and grappling with the material: reflecting, asking questions, offering ideas and observations, hunting in the library, or leading the rest of us to a new way of understanding.

"Good scholarship is well-done interaction." I love that! That is how I think of collaboration--interaction, the intercourse of minds. You doubtless remember how I put it, but someone new might read this far:

'They can see how the "DNA" of their thinking has been woven into the mix, and the new thought-child is the better for the diversity that went into its making.'   -- moi, 8/21/09

As for "have the time to “take a walk” with this material at least once a week"... of course that is a good part of my leaning towards audiobooks with mobile input, so I can take notes along the way--you know, take a walk and still do that interaction thing.  :-)

1/5/10 Architects and Observation: What we learn from Agassiz

All the quotes in this section are from Louis Agassiz: Illustrative Extracts on His Method Of Instruction by Lane Cooper, 1917.  You might want to consider reading the original, as it is very entertaining and quite illuminating. Why Agassiz? Well, the name, together with Feynman's, is listed under "Observation" in the Systems Architecting syllabus for SAE 599 (mentioned in the post above). Of course, observation is something I'm interested in too, so I went tacking down the Agassiz allusion. Well, as soon as I started reading I recognized the fish story Dana tells, but neither my literary education nor my architecting sojourns had yet been informed by Lane Cooper and Louis Agassiz. :-)

When the question was put to Agassiz, 'What do you regard as your greatest work?' he replied: 'I have taught men to observe.'

Some background motivation for those interested in studying and revealing the structure of systems:

"...none of us has heard too much about the fundamental operations of observation and comparison in the study of living forms, or of the way in which great teachers have developed the original powers of the student. It is simply the fact that, reduced to the simplest terms, there is but a single method of investigating the objects of natural science and the productions of human genius. We study a poem, the work of man's art, in the same way that Agassiz made Shaler study a fish, the work of God's art; the object in either case is to discover the relation between form or structure and function or essential effect. It was no chance utterance of Agassiz when he said that a year or two of natural history, studied as he understood it, would give the best kind of training for any other sort of mental work."

One Agassiz story:

"His initiatory steps in teaching special students of natural history were not a little discouraging. Observation and comparison being in his opinion the intellectual tools most indispensable to the naturalist, his first lesson was one in _looking_. He gave no assistance; he simply left his student with the specimen, telling him to use his eyes diligently, and report upon what he saw. He returned from time to time to inquire after the beginner's progress, but he never asked him a leading question, never pointed out a single feature of the structure, never prompted an inference or a conclusion. This process lasted sometimes for days, the professor requiring the pupil not only to distinguish the various parts of the animal, but to detect also the relation of these details to more general typical features. His students still retain amusing reminiscences of their despair when thus confronted with their single specimen; no aid to be had from outside until they had wrung from it the secret of its structure. But all of them have recognized the fact that this one lesson in looking, which forced them to such careful scrutiny of the object before them, influenced all their subsequent habits of observation, whatever field they might choose for their special subject of study."

Another:

"Some years after we came together, when indeed I was formally his assistant,--I believe it was in 1866,--he became much interested in the task of comparing the skeletons of thoroughbred horses with those of common stock. I had at his request tried, but without success, to obtain the bones of certain famous stallions from my acquaintances among the racing men in Kentucky. Early one morning there was a fire, supposed to be incendiary, in the stables in the Beacon Park track, a mile from the College, in which a number of horses had been killed, and many badly scorched. I had just returned from the place, where I had left a mob of irate owners and jockeys in a violent state of mind, intent on finding some one to hang. I had seen the chance of getting a valuable lot of stallions for the Museum, but it was evident that the time was most inopportune for suggesting such a disposition of the remains. Had I done so, the results would have been, to say the least, unpleasant.

As I came away from the profane lot of horsemen gathered about the rums of their fortunes or their hopes, I met Agassiz almost running to seize the chance of specimens. I told him to come back with me, that we must wait until the mob had spent its rage; but he kept on. I told him further that he risked spoiling his good chance, and finally that he would have his head punched; but he trotted on. I went with him, in the hope that I might protect him from the consequences of his curiosity. When we reached the spot, there came about a marvel; in a moment he had all those raging men at his command. He went at once to work with the horses which had been hurt, but were savable. His intense sympathy with the creatures, his knowledge of the remedies to be applied, his immediate appropriation of the whole situation, of which he was at once the master, made those rude folk at once his friends. Nobody asked who he was, for the good reason that he was heart and soul of them. When the task of helping was done, then Agassiz skillfully came to the point of his business--the skeletons--and this so dexterously and sympathetically, that the men were, it seemed, ready to turn over the living as well as the dead beasts for his service. I have seen a lot of human doing, much of it critically as actor or near observer, but this was in many ways the greatest. The supreme art of it was in the use of a perfectly spontaneous and most actually sympathetic motive to gain an end. With others, this state of mind would lead to affectation; with him, it in no wise diminished the quality of the emotion. He could measure the value of the motive, but do it without lessening its moral import."

1/8/10: Daniel Stroe reminded me that Kung Fu Panda (the movie) illustrates the point nicely: "in short, the unexpected becomes a master beyond all the appearances, just being himself. It is a good story." I am reminded, time and again, that great leaders and great architects come in quite an array of personalities, experiential backgrounds, and personal strengths. I have yet to work with a great architect who is a dullard, but, for example, I would not select for either introversion or extroversion. I might like to think that great architects are introverts (many are), but I've worked with enough extrovert (in the Myers-Briggs sense) architects to upset any inclination to box people up that way! And so it goes.

Look, the bottom line is that we have been learning that the brain is amazingly adaptable. Sure, some people by birth and by stimulation and opportunity, have higher (traditionally measured) intelligence and some have higher emotional intelligence, and the architect role is pretty demanding along both dimensions. But let's face it, we tend not to choose to do things we really are bad at (it is dangerous to our ego, if not our body). So given some decent predisposition, the people who have the aspiration and passion and energy to focus and develop and overcome have a good shot at being great at what they choose to really work at. 

1/11/10: And yes, I have taken to reminding architects in workshops of points along the lines of those I make in the Care and Feeding of the Architect Tree piece I wrote in this journal and harvested for the Bredemeyer site. In short, we have to do our current role well, including being a good follower and making our superiors successful in their missions. And we also have to show up as having the aptitude (and fortitude) that would serve well at the next level of scope...

Architects in Evolution

The difference, then, becomes one of re-arranging one's mental maps. As a tech lead, or a technical specialist, our ego is pretty much wrapped around being the go-to person for seriously tough technical issues. Then we discover that what the management team is looking for in their architect position, especially one with broad scope and consequently high strategic impact, is someone who is effective at applying technology to the creation of value. That is, we go from being someone who addresses some point of complexity, to being someone who addresses organizational complexity--in the technical sense of classic software architecture definitions (parts and responsibilities, and relationships and interaction), as well as the broader sense of fit to purpose and to context including the social context of organizing work to create great systems through the application of multiple intellects and domains of expertise. We go from being someone who can design mechanisms to being someone who can design systems (as well as mechanisms), understanding and taking into account that software systems are not, no matter how much our coding background may lead us to believe this, purely technical systems but rather technical systems that sink or float on social currents.  Which is to say, they are systems that serve people (even if indirectly) and are built by people. Some devices are more obviously social, like an iPhone or Nexus One, but others, like printers, still impact what humans do and how we live. We may tag digital cameras with credit for the digital photography revolution, but if individuals couldn't print high quality images on demand from the convenience of their desktop, this revolution might have been slower taking root. So these technology devices are embedded in socio-technical ecosystems in complex ways, and it is an aspect of the architect's role to understand that ecosystem, not just the system guts. Why? Because the ecosystem determines the forces that the system will be subjected to, for one thing. You can't know everything, nor predict the future. Blah blah. So we need an architecturally sufficient understanding. And sensors that alert us to opportunities to harness changing value aspirations, or alert us to emerging risk.

YAGNI has a role to play, but so does the notion of "safety factor" in complex system engineering. Architects have to be able to foresee enough of the driving forces that will shape the system over some span of production to make a judgment call about apparent "over-engineering"--apparent, that is, from the perspective of those looking only at the current level of transaction load/scale and at the current use scope, for example. So we balance YAGNI and a sensitivity to the likely unfolding of the system, putting in just enough of the foundation and scaffolding that will enable to us to build the future that the system is intended to serve.     

1/7/10 Code Maps

Adrian Kuhn wrote to add pointers to our software and architecture visualization resources list. His code cartography work sure looks interesting.

He pointed us to:

• Codemap, Adrian Kuhn

• CodeCanvas (Microsoft)

• Architecture visualization in VS 2010 (Microsoft)

What do you think?

"The learning sciences have discovered that when learners externalise and articulate their developing knowledge, they learn more effectively (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). This is more complex than it might sound, because it’s not the case that learners first learn something, and then express it. Instead, the best learning takes place when learners articulate their unformed and still developing understanding, and continue to articulate it throughout the process of learning. Articulating and learning go hand in hand, in a mutually reinforcing feedback loop. In many cases, learners don’t actually learn something until they start to articulate it—in other words, while thinking out loud, they learn more rapidly and deeply than studying quietly."

-- Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M., Toward research-based innovation. In F. Benavides (Ed.), Emerging models for learning and innovation, 2007.

(If you read that quote, you'll see why it is important to me to bleed thoughts all over the margins of books I'm reading--I hadn't read the research referenced, but had found the interactive process important to my own thinking style, helping me integrate what I'm reading and extend what I know.)

1/8/10 Still More Books!

• David Perkins, Archimedes’ Bathtub: The Art and Logic of Breakthrough Thinking (paperback: The Eureka Effect), 2000
• David Perkins, King Arthur’s Round Table: How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations, 2002
• David Perkins, Learning at Work: Research Lessons on Leading Learning in the Workplace
• David Perkins, The Intelligent Eye: Learning to Think by Looking at Art
   
• George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 1980

I really should have played back more of the Sir Ken talk in mine--I thought of doing his opening, but chickened out after the first line--too nervous. But think about it, wouldn't this have been great:

I have an interest in software... actually what I find is that everybody has an interest in software. Don't you? I find this very interesting...  If you're at a dinner party and you say you work in software --actually you're not often at dinner parties, frankly, ... if you work in software.  You're not asked ..., you know, and you're never asked back... curiously... seems rather strange to me but if you are and they ask "what do you do?" and you say you work in software, you can see the blood run from their face and they think "oh my God, why me? My one night out all week..." But if you ask about their software they pin you to the wall...

... everyone has an interest in software... partly because it is software that will take us into the future...

-- replacing "software" for "education" in Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk: "Schools Kill Creativity"

I'll have to do that sometime. Oh don't worry, only you and I know I thought of doing this. Everybody who hears me, will find it fresh because they don't read here. :-)        

1/9/10 Scenarios: Fathoming The Unknowable

"Yet, the purpose of scenario planning is not to pinpoint future events but to highlight large-scale forces that push the future in different directions. It's about making these forces visible, so that if they do happen, the planner will at least recognize them. It's about helping make better decisions today.

This all sounds rather esoteric, but as my partner Peter Schwartz is fond of saying, "scenario making isn't rocket science." He should know. Not only did he help develop the technique back in the 1970s, but he's also a rocket scientist."

-- Lawrence Wilkinson, How to Build Scenarios, Wired, 1995

If there's one thing you ought to thank me for this year, it is pointing you to that article--it's a classic.   ;-)  (Naturally I've read, and pointed you to, The Art of the Long View by Peter Schwartz.)

I love the way Wilkinson positions scenarios, and as well as the instruction on developing scenarios. Of course, our Competitive Landscape Maps and Technology Roadmaps are what we use to identify driving forces, but Wilkinson was writing way back in 1995, so he can't be faulted for not envisaging what we'd be doing with scenarios now. ;-) I do like the bundling uncertainties section, and it will change what I do there.

Yes, yes, we ♫predict the future by inventing it☼--what we do becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of greater likelihood than pure randomness because we put intentional weight behind making it unfold. But we have a better hope of collaborating positively with the unfolding of the future if we have done a good job of understanding driving forces--and shifting the ecosystem in intentional ways that are in fair fit to where people's aspirations are likely to take the future. For a while there, it might have looked like Bezos was backing a rather lame horse, but the Kindle came through in huge style this Christmas just past. Once again, he demonstrated foresight as well as gumption and infectious enthusiasm. That, and working with and through great people, to unfold the future--not precisely as he foretold, but close enough to what matters. So, rather than looking at a future where the very online store that killed brick-and-mortar mom-and-pop bookshops got killed by the next wave of change, Bezos decided to be the force that caused the next wave of change--that way he could again be the dominant shaping force. Barnes and Nibble (ok, Noble) said "not so fast" and rode the wave too--with nearly double the number of books to download? Wow!

So, as Ryan told Sara when they were little: "we don't know what is going to happen, only what has happened."  And even then, a lot of what we "know" has happened relies on faulty memory, limited perception/perceptual filters, and bounded rationality. Very bounded. As Wilkinson says, we can't be paralyzed by uncertainty. We interpret and represent to ourselves the past, and we interpret--read the signs of--and represent to ourselves the future.  And if we like what we see there, we work to help others help us realize that future. The more effective we are at enlisting and co-opting help to realize that future, the more likely that future is. It's not certain. But hey, how certain are you that you ate breakfast this day a year ago?

1/12/10 Open Enrollment Software Architecture Workshop

A quick commercial announcement, in case you know someone who would benefit from the workshop (and who would like to take advantage of the early enrollment discount which applies to enrollments completed by January 29th):

• Software Architecture Workshop, Chicago, IL, April 19-22, 2010 

The Software Architecture Workshop will be taught by Dana Bredemeyer in The Netherlands the preceding week (April 12-15). Enroll through the Embedded Systems Institute. The last time Dana taught this class in The Netherlands (December 2009), it filled early, so enroll soon if you're wanting to take this class in Europe in April.

1/23/10: A note on process and frameworks: when we mention the Visual Architecting Process (VAP), most people don't hear "framework"--but what is a architecting process if not first a decision model and view model? It is just that a process doesn't end there. It also gives guidance on how to do the dance, weaving threads of reasoning through the views to make the decisions organized in the decision model. And if that isn't the best characterization of an architecting process, my name isn't Ruth Malan. ;-)  

If an architecture is a set of decisions, an architecting process guides that decision-making. Of course, VAP is flexible, adaptive, iterative, collaborative, visual, etc. and leverages multi-functional teams and concurrency, prototyping and experiment, etc. It is agile in the true spirit of agile--it allows for quick cycles of discovery and adaption to find the value sweet-spot and create, deliver and sustain competitive distinction and strategic advantage.   

1/10/10 Allowing Thoughts to Bleed Through the Interface

"I was kind of in a funk for a while, and I drew a comic about a guy throwing a boomerang over and over, and it just cracked me up. I didn't even check what people were saying about it – I didn't care, because I was having fun. I find that the less I look at the feedback, the more fun I'm having, and the better the strip is."

-- Randall Munroe on his First Book, xkcd: Volume zero,  10/12/09

Randall was talking about negative feedback, and certainly I don't want negative feedback (I turn my critical eye mostly upon myself, which among other things, gives rise to much of the self-effacing satire that permeates this trace). But the bigger point is pertinent--I keep this trace because it is fun. Mostly I let it just be that. Still, being that this is my journal, I use a personal voice. But not without qualm. So from time to time, I consider again the shape of my Trace and what to leave behind the scenes and what to allow to bleed through this public interface... The upcoming 4th "birthday" triggered the current identity/worth crisis, but really it is an ongoing concern. This is ♫not a frog, nor a paper cup. It started out that way, wanting some confirming affirmation of the format and forum. But as the mist of this uncertainty shifts, I realize the bigger questions of format and relevance are answerable without panhandling feedback. For now, I've decided to reward the kindly stalwarts who came back to look in on this Trace. So, YAGNI served you well, yet again. ;-)

Here comes the sun♫... ;-)

1/10/10 Call for Papers

• Software Architecture: Framing Stakeholders' Concerns (Final submissions due: 1 April 2010; Publication date: November/December 2010)

It is an interesting concept--brand sizzle is quantifiably valued by shareholders. That puts a different wrinkle on the economics of architecture, doesn't it? It means that delight, and protecting "delight" from nasty surprises like big service outages that cause news trucks to line up outside the CEO's offices, is to be viewed both in terms of price premium and market valuation premium. We "know" that (financial goals/shareholder value is explicit in the value propositions layer of the VAP strategy model)--but how often do you see that factor in strategic discussions and decision making? Innovation, system integrity, organizational agility, all these things are rooted in architectural excellence (taking different forms, for different vectors of differentiation, of course).

1/14/10 Seeing Into the Future

If my writing with positive enthusiasm for my work irks and discomforts you, you have only yourself to blame. So long as no-one else celebrates my poor words, I have to!  And then you are absolved of that chore. So it's a synergistic sort of thing, really. And not at all arrogant--rather the opposite! I have to will myself to spill words into the quiet well of our field--hearing only my own thin quiet voice in response is poor compensation, but it has to serve as compensation enough!   

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

And if you think my words are too flowery for what you're currently working on--it's not that important, not that big... then first lead yourself! This day, this week is extraordinary! If you make it so! If you see. Frame. Draw. This stuff folds up, and down, in those neat fractals. Not self-similar exactly, except along some dimensions. But surely you see the pattern?

Flowery. Self-helpy. Sometimes... I dismiss myself!! So I get it that you dismiss me too. :-) 

Or...a unique perspective, well-researched in life, in lives lived and lives told; a distillation into principles worth practicing?

But which?

If you don't like what you see, you can change what you look at, or change where you look from. Or, perhaps, both.

Self-helpy? Or distinctive aphorism worth flagging? And a note to self: change what I look at. :-)

Well, anyway, you can see where my uncertainties lie. If one tries to guide--to assimilate, synthesize and distill a wide gamut of experience and research into principles and practices--at what point is it puntable "self-help" and how does one distinguish that from a worthwhile intellectual drawcard? How smart one assumes one's readers are?

I'm sorry, I have a wickedly ironic sense of humor.

Yesterday, I exasperatedly told Sara she was a revisionist. She asked "What's that?" I told her it is someone who revises what's happened. Without a moment's hesitation, she said "I believe that's called a reporter." At 10, she's developing a deliciously dry sense of humor.

A few nights ago, picking up Ryan from his friend's house, the father turned to the mother saying "we really have to replace this light bulb." It was on the tip of my tongue to say "Yay feminism!" But then I thought I'd have to explain that I have a dry sense of humor, which directly led to the thought "dry sense of humor? You know, when I get it, but no-one else does." Which is one of those meta kinds of irony-ridden (so dry it that sucks all the moisture out of the universe) self-flagellations because then dry is a category of pseudo-intellectualist pseudo-comedy or ... the real deal... but how would you know? The people outside the circle don't get it, and the people inside the circle simply hold the same delusions of meta grandeur. All of which was so exquisitely captured in one of my favorite (and oft referenced) xkcd sketches--right down to the wasteland with all the moisture sucked out...  and the meta comment about perspective...

dizzy? I told you I can do this thing with words. My brothers are to blame... ;-)

1/22/10 On Urgency

What do Dov Frohman and the Rasmussen brothers have in common? I don't know really, but there's at least the shared sense that creating an ongoing climate of urgency is important.

1/22/10 For the Nightstand

Polya (recommended by Dana), Inner Fish (recommended by Oliver Sachs), and Power of Myth (a neat-sounding stumble but it turns out Dana watched the series and recommends it):

• G. Polya, Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning (Volume I),  1990
• Neil Shubin, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, 2009
• Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, 1991

1/25/10 Multi-dimensional Design by Multi-dimensional People

Few would argue that architects are the primary agents of system integrity, at least when that means integrity of structure. But I would go further, and argue that architects also need to champion aesthetic integrity--and more, be the champions and guardians of design integrity where design is about delight where it is what the product or system is all about, and good enough where it doesn't make a difference. To do that, we have to recognize that it takes a full, multi-dimensional person. A person who is imaginative and creative, an explorer in ideas and ideals who is able to bridge from possibility to the increments of value delivery that must be taken to reach that vision. Such a person is pragmatic and determined, capable of testing and improving, redesigning, redirecting, evolving and adapting the concept, the design, the implementation. But all the time an optimistic visionary who inspires momentum, as progress is made and sometimes reset, uncertainty is resolved only to find the next set of challenges, the design is clarified and morphed, the value propositions are uncovered and solidified and shaken up and driven out more solidly, and the structures that embody them are built out and evolved.

Such a person takes huge emotional risks. To lead is to be exposed to failure and to the scrutiny of detractors who have an ax to grind--and will. The leader sets context for followers, and part of that context is context for the person--the human with aspirations and need for doing meaningful work that gains recognition and social place. But the leader is fully human too. Fully human. This means we have to take human foibles into account. For example, managers and leaders of leaders, also need to set emotional context, too. Partly, it is establishing the importance and meaning of the work, so that contributors can self-reward. And partly it is explicitly recognizing contributions.

Anyway, this is an intensely human and enormously challenging intellectual, creative, technical, experiential, aspirational kind of domain to work in. It means taking a lot of flak, shielding others from it, but also being a target because you are trying to make a difference.

I think it is important to be a multi-dimensional person because an architect needs to draw on a multi-dimensional skill-set, work both sides of the brain, have ground under the feet, yet be able to see ahead and frame what must be done close-in, in terms that enable the future to be built out.

So I challenge myself and I challenge you to be comfortable with that. But it is a challenge, because even though leadership is fractal, allowing for many, many puddles of leadership, leadership is fundamentally a point of tension. It is also a challenge because our software world has been set up to divide and conquer, and the roles that are overlaid across turf tzar boundaries are inherently going to draw flak, with little thanks to the persons taking that heat. And it is a challenge because the pragmatics of cutting code in the moment jive better with YAGNI than "let's apply a little imagination here," "a little over-engineering/safety factor there," and just enough DUF with small group modeling in advance of pair programming...  So it is inherently a role that take heat, requires diverse skills and activities, is constantly working at points of conflict, is part healer in a broken world, and part creator of disturbance enough to create urgency around moving forward, etc.

In short, being an architect requires a whole person, not just a holistic thinker. Having loving relationships, a playful orientation, having fun pursuing various physical in-the-world activities and intellectual in-the-head activities, and working with passion inspiring spirited, engaged work with determined, purposeful focus--all these things are important to the multi-dimensional architect as whole person.                

1/25/10 How to Give Thanks

If leadership is, at least in part, about explicitly recognizing contributions, how do we do that without being smarmy? You can frame this up as remembering to say thank you, or whatever terms you want to paint your appreciation in. Or you can frame it up as celebration and acknowledgment. Just don't, DO NOT, frame it up as flattery, or anything of that ilk; don't frame it up as manipulation or a Trojan horse/Greek gift. Not to yourself, not to anyone. If you are offering praise to gain some end for yourself, don't do it! If you know your recognition isn't pure gratitude, go work on yourself and how you see what you want to recognize--get your agenda out of the way, and ask yourself: what is the quality and value of a contribution that I am instinctively drawn to, and how do I acknowledge, appreciate and reward that? Not because you want more of that. But because you want to allow that person to be more themselves, to flourish. 

Yes, of course, ultimately building a team that flourishes will serve your agenda--good if your agenda is to build out a balanced vision based on stakeholder goals, needs, aspirations, technology capabilities, ecosystem forces and drivers. So you can work with a circles of integrity model, with values and intent at the center--if your very mission is out of alignment with your personal integrity and values, it will be hard to make the rest align consistently with your moral core, and the incongruity will create ongoing dissonance for you. One might make the case that intent is pure if it is in the service of humans, the environment, and the business--without subverting any of these. At any rate, beyond values and intent, are behaviors that will deliver the intent in a way that is consistent with the values--principles that guide the behaviors, practices that enable the behaviors, and so forth. Then you can have an agenda, and values too. All lined up. And the Agassiz story is a nice illustration of how working one's agenda can be perfectly consistent with being a deeply decent human being!

Deeply decent human beings say thank you. And deeply decent, joyful human beings celebrate. Without being smarmy. Or manipulative. Or affected.

Then, if someone else wants to doubt your intent, interpret your thanks and celebration as pandering or subversive manipulation, they can check in on their own personal attitudes and alignment with their moral core. And they can look at the lineage of your actions, and see how it aligns with your values and the service orientation that has a direct line-of-sight back to your official intent and personal moral core. And they will find that their judgments are simply mean spirited.

Irrelevant? How many architects do you know who have left their job for another, feeling dispirited about the impact they were having in a vacuum of appreciation for their contribution, only to find that on the day they gave notice, there was a parade of belated gratitude? Of course I hear about more of these situations, but there's a disturbing pattern. Now this runs up and down the technical leadership tree--because technical people tend to think this stuff is smarmy and any advice here is the kind of pop-psyche self-helpy stuff that is all very well for management, but belittling for technical people--even those who lean toward the avant-garde. So we have this credit vacuum, where the very people who see best what the contributions to value and to technical integrity are, feel bound by culture and practice to be, at best, tepid when it comes to appreciation. This means that technical people, who vest their self-image in technical contribution, get very little human reflection on that contribution. Which breeds a culture of self-projection--of machismo and demonstration. Leaving the architect between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

This, then, is just one of those areas where the architect has to embrace the dual nature of the role--that of architect and that of culture changer. Dana Bredemeyer (naturally) has a really nice way of putting this. In essence, he says that the architect is constantly looking for what is getting in the way of the right thing being done, and "adjusting the knobs" so that the right thing gets done without her/his ongoing intervention. This for instance, is what we do with principles--they are a "knob" we can use to rule out a set of decisions and behaviors that are undermining progress towards realizing the architecture and the business intent behind it. In the human context and appreciation space, the architect can lead by example--serving the team, including their need for social safety and for meaning, with recognition of their contribution to work that is building towards something meaningful.  

What kind of world is this, where malcontent and criticism is so much more apt to be voiced than appreciation and affirmation? We think it important to confirm the negative but not the positive? ♫How sad! 

Children effervesce without guard; adults only boil over! And we think we're "grown up" but mostly we're only grown over with cynicism and ground down to conformity.

1/25/10 Collaborations Visualized

Graceland is one of my favorite albums--no surprise, since it is a wonderful meld of Paul Simon and the happy heartbeat of Africa. The album is imbued with the question: why shuffle when you can dance? 

These are the days of miracle and wonder. Don't cry baby, don't cry♫.   Ooh ooh ooh♫.

Remember ♫this? I love the humor in it. (Why doesn't that surprise you? Paul Simon absolutely hands-down out-does me when it comes to deadpan!)

Great collaborations in music--where you see the respect and the flow and the fun--always make me think of the best of my experiences in software--experiences when this was true for me and everyone on the team: 

"the creative process with the laughter and spontaneity, the tug of war and the energy toward a shared vision was our greatest success."

-- Edie Brickell, bio, the New Bohemians, 2/28/2006

1/25/10 The Expected, and Not

Innovators, leaders, achievers have to break the mold; expect that you can do the unexpected.

Then again, how about those Colts?  Sometimes you just gotta do the expected too. :-)

1/25/10 Main Objective

Ryan had a friend over for an hour (parental "taxi" schedules are tough to sync). At the outset, Ryan said, "Ok, X, what is your main objective in coming over here, because we don't have much time." Never, ever dismiss or underestimate a kid! They're able to hold really wacky notions in creative tension with absolute rationality. They don't know what "can't be done," so they do it anyway. It's quite astonishing really.

"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." -- Stephen Covey

This reminds me of something else Ryan said to the same friend a while back:

"There's a fine line between appropriate and inappropriate, and then there's the whole category of stuff you just don't do!"

Then, and now, I immediately thought of this journal. I wonder why... Ciao! 

1/26/10 What the Silence Said

"I played him a particular vocal I'd recorded and I was convinced he would love it because I thought it was the vocal performance of my life," she says, quietly, "but he wasn't moved by it, and he told me so. Very plainly. In that instant, I felt that he had taken away all my confidence. I felt drained, exhausted, as if all the blood was running right out of me, and I started to shake. But it was also an epiphany of sorts, because, of course, he was right. "

-- Anjani: songs of love and Leonard, April 2007

1/27/10 Less is More

I trimmed the "forest" of JournalCurrent words down; lost some of the ruff.

“Words are innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, defining that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos . . . They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little...”  -- Tom Stoppard

indifferent heels

they shuffle by

as my soul cries

for the trampled rose

the shimmering

thought-child dies

since only I

mourn its passing

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

Architects wrestle to tame the transmogrifying beast--in the organization not just the code. We rally aspiration and strive to deliver value, meet our team's desire to build something that just fits (its purpose and context), even delights and awes, and has integrity--is sustainable, structurally sound, and congruent with principle and our disciplined, discerning, aesthetic core. And we balance integrity with day-to-day pragmatism and the necessity of getting things done. 

Getting things done. In the context of turf battles, the drive to conformity and settling, sheer complexity and uncertainty, risk aversion and fear, with a strong sense of time pressure. In that hurly-burly, entropy grows and casts a heavy burden, mounting cynicism and a temptation to succumb to the damning damping indifference of its weight. We call growing entropy technical debt. Then legacy. Meaning something we need, but it weighs us down, anchors our business to the past.   

So every day we reassemble optimism, focus one lens on the future and one on the moment, and set about making a difference*. Changing the outcome by shifting the culture, bringing in humor and play, trust and dialog, discipline and integrative thinking, and a positive view of what is truly possible.

[* Dana uses a "two hands" image, where the architect is working the immediate problem with one hand, and working to guide the cultural shift with the other. Dana illustrates this with his hands--talking with his hands is something he is really good at. I admire this about him--except when he is driving. :-) Note to self: never let Rives drive!] 

And what do I do in this Trace? I put words to what you know. How can there be value in that? This you see, is much like architecture. The value is not in the pile of parts, but in the collaboration, the interworking of the parts. Insight comes when the arrangement is just-so, and suddenly all the pieces fit together and new understanding emerges.

Or, from the tangle, I rend the organizing structure that provides clarity, a sense of place and alignment of purpose.