We’ve all
watched bad decisions about technology architecture made right in front of our
eyes. It's time to do something about it
I’ve been in
some knock-down, drag-out battles over both the configuration and the use of
technology. On one side, you have somebody with a very different opinion as to
what technology should be used and how. On the other side, you know that you
are right.
These days
the battles are about which cloud provider to choose, what database to use,
what devops tool chain to engage. So many new things fly at us each day and so
many more choices have to be made that conflicts are a foregone conclusion.
What drives me
nuts is that there is typically one right answer to the problem—that is, one
set of technologies and configurations that are the most efficient. Other
solutions typically won’t fail outright, but they will work at a much-reduced
efficiency.
There will be
no “I told you so” moments, just millions of potentially investable dollars
lost during the next several years. I call it “a stupid tax.”
The most
politically savvy people usually make the architecture calls, right or wrong;
however, they are typically motivated by emotion, not logic. Perhaps they like
the sales team from one vendor and therefore rate their technology much higher
than others. They don’t consider how well it lives up to the business
requirements other than a pass/fail. Will it work or not? That never should be
the question.
How do you
remove the negative effects of people on enterprise cloud architecture
decisions? I’ve found a few things that work.
First,
predetermine guidelines that everyone can agree on regarding frameworks for
selecting any technology and the configuration of that technology. Agreeing to
a logical process will typically determine the right answer; then it’s tough
for anyone to suggest that you divert from that path.
In essence,
you’re using their political savvy against them. It doesn't look very good to
break rules that they helped make.
Second, and
most difficult, you need to change the culture. If the organization's culture
is to not stick your neck out for any reason, the people with the strongest
personalities will run roughshod over those who are less assertive—and in many
cases, the quieter people have the right answers. Making asserting yourself
part of the internal reward system is a good first step, or tweaking the
decision-making process to allow for equal input from all personality types.
Changes in culture must come from the top.
Forthcoming
challenges are not around finding technology that can solve problems, it’s
picking the most effective technology to solve that problem. People are going
to make those calls, so we need to work on the human side of the process.
Content & Images Source: Infoworld
How To Stop People From Causing Bad
Cloud Architectures
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