Three weeks ago I’d did a presentation in Ireland at an architects forum on user experience. This presentation was for the LEAP (Lead Enterprise Architects Forum), which is a type of forum held in just a couple of countries across EMEA. It was really a special experience for me as it confirmed some thoughts and learnings I had in the past couple of years - and especially since I started the new role as an architect evangelist. …And… as I still meet too many geeks which tend to drive decisions “just” on “cool technologies”, I want to share this experience…
After the presentation, which went really well, I had a conversation with some of the architects (from Cap Gemini, Accenture, HP etc.). And many of the attendees said “my primary tool is PowerPoint and Excel… and sometimes Visio…”. And why? Well, because most of them are persons “preparing” decisions and making decisions in context of business and strategy! That means these decisions are definitely not technology-decisions at first place. Rather the technology-decisions are just a result of their work after understanding the business and strategy, but not their primary work.
And that’s exactly the point I’d like to make here: almost too often “Geeks” out there tend to make decisions on a pure technology-basis which isn’t really the way it should be! That’s just the reason why I can’t hear statements such as “Office development isn’t cool, therefore I do it on my own…” or “Our strategy is TECHNOLOGY-X” or “Tell me more about this technology and then I know what I want to do…” anymore… I mean, how can a technology be strategy? And… shouldn’t you know what you want to do before we talk about technologies? It’s that simple, isn’t it?
Want more, just take a look at a definition of “Software Architect” :))