Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Thoughts on Enterprisey Architects...
Many folks in the blogosphere have referred to me as enterprisey in the past. Knowing that I am not alone, I figured I would help others to conclude that they are enterprisey too...
You need to ask yourself the following questions:
What kind of leadership does your enterprise practice?
| | View blog reactionsYou need to ask yourself the following questions:
- Does it sometimes take two weeks to plan for a one-hour task?
- It isn't too difficult to think of one very senior manager who is universally acknowledged to be completely incapable of doing his job but for political considerations will still remain in position after multiple reorganizations
- The word enterprise itself doesn't have a strong meaning in that it can refer to a variety of levels within the corporate structure
- Your boss has more people over him (e.g. his boss, his boss's boss,etc) than under him
- You are periodically called away from actual work to have a meeting about when you should next have a meeting about "the Schedule."
- You politely decline an invitation to attend an all-employee "we love you and want to make you feel included" shindig, at which some IT executive will be presenting, and your boss's boss has a talk with your boss, who then explains to you that having real work to do is not a good enough reason not to go
- You must attend meetings in order to find out what you are quite capable of reading via email.
- Before you schedule a meeting, you have to figure out challenging logistical considerations such as which building
- Getting approval to purchase a $3,000 laptop is no more difficult than getting approval to buy a $10 stapler
- Your executives have drank the kool-aid pushed by large enterprise vendor X and is brought in to make everything more efficient and everything becomes more difficult
- You spend 90% of your time navigating or working around bureaucracy and 10% doing real work.
- You stamp everything "DRAFT" to cover your butt...
- There are employees whose sole purpose is to type information from one system to another
- You suddenly realize you are posting Dilbert cartoons not because you think they're funny, but because you identify with them.
- Every time you have a meeting with someone from another "department," your manager feels he needs to attend.
- Project managers maintains two schedules, one to keep track of what the developers are working on, and the other to show to management.
What kind of leadership does your enterprise practice?
