BOINK

Once every four days was pretty reasonable, I thought.  I am between jobs and therefore have extra time on my hands.  Surely I can throw out a blog post every four days or so.  Right?  Well the past nearly-two-months have been challenging in other ways, including a sort of writer’s block – and a bit of a writer’s identity crisis.  Fortunately, I’ve been queuing up some good draft material, and as of – 30 minutes ago – I think I’ve identified one - if not two – major nuclei I require in order to focus and to remove the block.

I’ll write about the nucleii I’ve discovered in another post.  As for the lag, aside from being busy, I’ve been a bit conflicted about what I want to write about.  Professionally, as an Enterprise Architect (the department in which I`ve most recently committed my services, but in all practicality, one of the most appropriate places for me, I think), I’ve been concerned with the intersection of ICT and business.  But personally, as a technologist and geek, I’m not, really.  Personally, it`s more about the consumer and the service to the user.  I it’s kinda that way in business too, however there’s a distinct parallax here.  And to me, this has been causing a bit of confusion, because I see the Consumer and Business Viewpoints in more or less the same terms and outcomes, even though traditionally they share very different priorities.

In real terms, in ICT we have only a few base verticies with which we can shape our viewpoint of the world.  These “verticies” are weighted differently, depending on the opinion-holder, and thus form different “viewpoints”, or opinions.  Above, I’ve basically described two viewpoints – one with a heavier weight on the “business” vertex, and another with a heavier weight on the “service” vertex.  “Viewpoints” is actually a major theme or even meme in Enterprise Architecture, so it’s perhaps apropos that I find this to be a sticking point.

In ICT, our verticies include the end user, who is also known as the consumer of the service.  We have the service, which is the manifestation of ICT by the business (and also the manifestation of business by ICT), and then we have ICT, which is the “technology”, and ultimately we have the business.  There is a phrase some of my colleagues choose as a bit of a mantra which goes, “technology for technology’s sake”, or specifically that they dislike this viewpoint and want their contributions in ICT to reflect a greater perspective.  I’ve seen this viewpoint realised often, and believe now that it’s simply a result of a viewpoint constructed of few or misaligned verticies – eg: it is absent of the “business” vertex.

All of this leads me to the realisation that I naturally perceive things from multiple viewpoints.  It turns out that this is essential to be effective in the role of Enterprise Architect, as that role is responsible for both the communication of and interpretation of the differing viewpoints of any particular ICT paradigm.  In other words, it’s not a weakness, but a strength.  However, it will certainly bring (and hopefully not turn away) a mixed audience to this blog!

So I believe the identity crisis is over.  You’re in for a dynamic ride through multiple viewpoints of how I perceive the evolution of Information Technology.  Like or hate what I have to say (I’m more interested in casual debate, actually), I hope you don’t find that I write about the same thing all the time, and I hope you keep coming back, because I’m sure the topics and conversation will interest you – if not always, then at least from time to time.  And with any luck, “time to time” won’t mean that I’ve been sitting on my hands for two months.