With a demanding job like that of an architect in a large IT
organization, it’s a healthy exercise to do more of those things you enjoy
and fewer of those you don’t enjoy. Of course, this requires you to know
what you truly enjoy (and truly despise) in the first place—a task that can be a little more challenging than it sounds,
especially for left-brained IT architects. The latter is generally more
easily answered: in my case it’s 8 a.m. meetings with no particular
objective that end up in a monologue by the highest-paid person. The
former usually takes a bit more reflection. Over the years, I have
realized that one of my favorite work activities is to listen to system
owners or solution architects describe their system, often in fragments,
and to draw a cohesive picture for them. The most satisfying moment
happens when they exclaim, “That’s exactly what it looks like,” without
them having been able to draw the picture themselves. This exercise is
also a great opportunity to learn about those system details that aren’t
documented anywhere.
Asking people to tell you about their system so that you can draw it for them
may remind you of the old joke that describes consultants (Chapter 38) as those people who borrow your watch to tell you what time it is (and charge you a lot of money ...
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