Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Architecture and Politics
Mitch Kapor (wikipedia bio) is famous for saying "Architecture is Politics". I never really understood what he meant until now.
In today's organizations, information is the currency of power. System architecture determines who can access what data, how, where and when. That is politics. It is embedded into the design process itself. Every system begins it's life as a document that specifies what that system will do and how it will do it. Great effort is expended at this point in an attempt to 'cover all the bases'; forecast all possible ways the system will be used. The underlying assumption is that the ones doing the designing are the only ones who will determine how that system will be used. That concentrates the decision-making and access to information in the hands of a few, and that is politics.
This approach comes with many problems, not the least of which is that the capabilities of the system are limited to the imagination of it's designers. No team, regardless of the abilities and brilliance of it's members, can predict all the ways a particular system, or the data it contains, could be used. Current development methodologies demand that they try, and when they fail, the system becomes a limiting factor to it's users rather than an enabler.
A core principle of Web 2.0 is "Harnessing Collective Intelligence". This needs to become a core principle of corporate applications as well. Everyone in a typical organization, from delivery boy to president, has information that could be potentially useful. Capturing and processing all of this information would be a major strategic advantage for that organization.
In today's organizations, information is the currency of power. System architecture determines who can access what data, how, where and when. That is politics. It is embedded into the design process itself. Every system begins it's life as a document that specifies what that system will do and how it will do it. Great effort is expended at this point in an attempt to 'cover all the bases'; forecast all possible ways the system will be used. The underlying assumption is that the ones doing the designing are the only ones who will determine how that system will be used. That concentrates the decision-making and access to information in the hands of a few, and that is politics.
This approach comes with many problems, not the least of which is that the capabilities of the system are limited to the imagination of it's designers. No team, regardless of the abilities and brilliance of it's members, can predict all the ways a particular system, or the data it contains, could be used. Current development methodologies demand that they try, and when they fail, the system becomes a limiting factor to it's users rather than an enabler.
A core principle of Web 2.0 is "Harnessing Collective Intelligence". This needs to become a core principle of corporate applications as well. Everyone in a typical organization, from delivery boy to president, has information that could be potentially useful. Capturing and processing all of this information would be a major strategic advantage for that organization.
Labels: Observations
