The Software Architect Elevator

Chapter 7. Question Everything

Wer Nicht Fragt, Bleibt Dumm!

The architect riddler

It’s a common misconception that chief architects know everything better than “normal” architects—why else would they be the “chief”? Such thinking is actually pretty far from the truth. Hence, I often introduce myself as a person who knows the right questions to ask. Wrangling one more reference from the movie The Matrix, visiting the chief architect is a bit like visiting the Oracle: you won’t get a straight answer, but you will hear what you need to hear.

Five Whys

Asking questions isn’t a new technique and has been widely publicized in the “five whys” approach devised by Sakichi Toyoda as part of the Toyota Production System. It’s a technique to get to the root cause of an issue by repeatedly asking why something happened. If your car doesn’t start, you should keep asking “why” to find out the starter doesn’t turn because the battery is dead because you left the lights on because the beeper that warns you of parking with your lights on didn’t sound because of an electronics problem. So, before you jump-start the car, you should fix the electronics to keep the problem from happening again. In Japanese the method is called naze-naze-bunseki (なぜなぜ分析), which roughly translates into “why, why analysis.” I therefore consider the “five whys” more of a guideline to not give up too early—you surely ...