Link: http://www.etc-architect.com/?p=127
From ETC-Architect » Architect Global | Architect, Global | Software Architect, Global
I am today and in the past was often confronted by managers to explain the physical outcome of architecture. Usually in early days I tried to describe all the documents I was producing just to lose the argument as documents or models are not classified as outcomes in economic terms. The same also applies for all art and most creative professions such as marketing that are not working measurable outcomes, as the success of a painter in economic terms is not measured in the amount of paintings he is producing. Funny enough one painter actually told me that he first got successful when he started to ask for fifty times the money more per painting than he used before.
So as architects we are in one way artists and in another way we are enablers for others (such as software developers) to create better measurable outcomes. As such it is dangerous to measure architecture in terms of any produce. An architect for example that keeps his organisation together in one meta information model is of more use than an architect that will produce 50 pages on architecture documentation per day. So an architect who will not produce anything himself but enabled a large organisation to move in one direction is more successful even if he not producing a bit in the conventional sense.
Now if you are sceptical of the above and there is no reason not to be, just look at the lack of defined lived standard business processes for architects. I am deliberately saying “lived” not drawn, as in most companies you will see EA or BA defining the architecture process, but virtually never living it, as there are elements specifically in the “as is” architecture where you can follow a process, but as soon as you are architecting the future this is no longer true. The same point also applies on the time estimation for architectural work that gets hard if you face the unknown or the really creative. As long as it is design you are doing you will be able to be judged on outcomes, time tables and you will follow process, but not in architecture.
