Enterprise Architecture: From Incite comes Insight...

James Robertson, Chris Petrilli and others have managed once again to get things twisted. Keeping folks straight is difficult...



Maybe the best way to get something straight is to also twist titles to fit a purpose and align with their thinking. Let's start with an analysis of the responses:

I’m reachable 24×7 on my cell phone, but that doesn’t mean 1) I’ll answer it, 2) that work has any right to call me outside about 7:30-18:00.

It is of course important to establish expectations, the challenge is that most folks don't have the same sense of what is important and what is not nowadays. Even if you choose to NOT answer, you will still react in a Pavlovian dog like fashion every time it rings which can only serve to distract you.

Actually, this is a misnomer. Yes, a lot of open source software is written without ever meeting, and I’d be the last person to want to be in the same room as RMS, but I can attest that the really big, successfully run projects all have in-person meetings on a regular basis.

So, he agrees that lots of open source software is written without ever meeting yet responds with what works for him which is more anecdotal than a necessity. I wonder if he is the one who actually organizes the meetings...

Time management is an active task and something that is especially difficult for people in the United States. For example when a project manager told me that he was working “100 hours a week”, my instant response was not “wow, you are busy”, it was “wow, you must suck as a project manager”.

I bet most folks in IT will not admit it but the folks most guilty of violating work/life balance tend to be non-technical project managers who think that everything is urgent. At least on this topic, Chris and I are in full agreement as to his response...

The one aspect though that is backtestable is that 25 lives in California would still be here if some stupid conductor weren't focused on his freakin phone. Good to see that one employer has started the trend in banning them...