Then real world reality struck! Where we’d had our heads down focussing on proving and building out the concepts we had lived in a bubble of our own making, ignoring interrupts that did not aid our aim, and reacting/responding to each others issues immediately (not really worrying about what time of day or night those issues arrived – Hey, we were really enjoying ourselves and wanting to do it rather than it being a external interrupt making us have to do it). As I’ve written, the experience has been hugely liberating and rewarding given our similar recent histories. As such there was no need for external motivation. This ‘bubble’ allowed us to accelerate hugely what we were able to put together in a limited amount of time, and without realising, that acceleration became the norm for us and the way we were working.

Having to now build to alpha, we are re-engaging with the ‘real world’ again and that meant cutting a great big hole in our bubble – I don’t actually know whether we are letting people in or having to step outside, but either way, the first thing that really hit us was that everything now seemed to operate in ‘bullet time’. The decceleration has been huge. Working very closely and being solely focussed on a single proposition meant very rapid resolution and execution. Now, while relishing the opportunity to address real business needs, it feels like we’ve slowed so much. We can’t just ‘do stuff’. Now, we spend time discussing and planning how we are going to address particular issues and when we can get people together to do this rather than just resolving the issue.
I suppose this is inevitable to a degree and I’m just stating the bleeding obvious, but I think also this is a cry for the environment for people to accelerate delivering innovative concepts that can assist a business; creating a culture where small groups of individuals feel empowered to explore without standard business interruption and looking at ways for maintaining momentum when those concepts are exposed to the wider community.

Its this last point that obviously is an issue for me at the moment. Do I accept those individuals we now engage with have other stuff to do besides help us? Of course I do, but what I think is a way forward (and this is maybe the measure of whether something goes from concept to alpha) is for the business to provide the time and space and the developers to enthuse those they need to work with of the value of what you’re doing. If people feel excited about something and have the time, I believe they are more likely to put that little bit more effort (or maybe a lot more effort) to help get whatever it is ‘out there’ and what that means ultimately is empowered individuals supporting each other and delivering ‘stuff’ of value to people and business more rapidly.

Inspired by a great t-shirt from these guys

Complex is lots of Simple

Always boil or break an issue down to it’s simplest resolution

Simple, but no Simpler - Einstein I think

Always look for the simplest solution but DO NOT compromise the requirement

Make it Right, then make it faster! All too often we bastardise a solution to meet a short term or tactical gain which we know will require rework at a later date – which never bloody happens. We live with the pain of this perpetually. Don’t compromise on what is right.

Simplicity, Elegance and Truth

All design should exhibit these qualities – the opposite doesn’t bear thinking about – Complex, Ineleganceand Falseness

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should

Do I need to explain this?

Stepping into a work building is like stepping through a Magic Doorway

Why do so many people seem to forget their common sense when they get to work?

There are no prizes for re-inventing the wheel – or at least there shouldn’t be!

NOTE: All the above should be taken with doses of JFDI, JFGI, RTFM and GOYA

Specific to Architecture and Design:

All decisions Must align to an agreed Abstract Model
To free designers to be creative without compromising the intent of the architecture, the Design Principles MUST be abstract, but the abstraction should clearly define the responsibilities for architects and designers:

“The purpose of abstracting is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.”

[Edsger W Dijkstra, The Humble Programmer, Comms of the ACM 15(10), October 1972]

“The most successful designs are not those that try to fully model the domain in which they operate, but those that are “in alignment” with the fundamental structure of that domain, and that allow for modification and evolution to generate new structural coupling. “

[Winograd, T., & F. Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design, Addison-Wesley, 1986. ]

Don’t blame the architecture – blame yourself

On the architecture of buildings:

“Architecture may well possess moral messages; it simply cannot enforce them. It offers suggestions instead of making laws. It invites, rather than orders, us to emulate its spirit and cannot prevent its own abuse.

We should be kind enough not to blame buildings for our own failure to honour the advice they can only subtly proffer.”

Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness, ISBN-10: 0141015004; ISBN-13: 978-0141015002

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Tempting though it is to remove this ‘starter post for beginners’ I haven’t. ‘Hello world!’ has a ring of comfort to me.

I began my career as a programmer and have seen these words far too many times – to the point of actually being repulsed by them. That has changed.

After many years working in the enterprise architect space of a large IT company and following the ‘design by slideware’ philosophy prevelent in such organisations, I became frustrated with the distance I’d put between myself and the real technology. I have recently been engaged in an exciting piece of work that enabled (forced!) me to learn how to code again and actually build what I wanted to prove rather than draw it and hope someone would translate it. It has been unbelievably liberating (and painful) and has given me a new spur to learning again (at least in work – I’ve always pushed myself into new things outside of those walls).

Along with some nudgings by some of my peers and seniors I respect I’m going to blog. What will come of it I don’t know. Hopefully something that makes others think, and even if not, something to occasionally laugh at.

So, like learning something from scratch you start somewhere, ‘Hello World!’