The Cost of the Right to be Different

It is a high season for IT contracts here in Canberra, so the “Let the Hundred Flowers Bloom” anti-pattern is in full bloom, so to speak. The original slogan was put forward by Mao - the free-thinking intelligentsia was lured by it, then identified as dissidents and slaughtered. However the people who heed this call in Enterprise IT will face no such fate - they will be paid handsome daily rate, work in physical and emotional comfort, and add another success to their resumes. That doesn’t mean no damage will be done.

Say a Government Department needs some Process Modelling. So they advertise for several Process Modellers, and expect the job to be done. It is assumed that each contractor who done some Process Modelling before knows how to do it, and can do the job by themselves without any additional guidance.

I know several very good Architecture Modellers, I also have a reason to believe I belong to such category, training and mentoring in the field for 15 years. Several times we were putting together a joint project, when one of us had a prospective client with too big a job for one. Every time it was very quickly agreed who would be calling the shots on the modelling principles and methodology. We all knew how to do the job very well, yet we also knew that to be useful, the model has to be consistent.

Yet when say I was asked to help with Information Modelling by one site, I was explicitly advised that trying to train, mentor or review the work of others is not the part of the engagement. Even though a couple of participants admitted that they studied UML a decade ago in UNI, and that was the only experience they had. However it was assumed that everyone should do their work without intrusive instructions or reviews. Much less experienced Modellers apparently did not need the rigour the much more experienced Modellers were applying on themselves voluntary.

I got an impression that it was seen as the issue of respect - recognise that every human is valuable, and therefore deserve their share of figuring out how to do things. Or perhaps it was seen as easier, faster and cheaper to let anyone do things the way they done that before.

It has been stated by experts that Use Cases done more harm than good to the industry, because more often than not the notation is used incorrectly. Business Process Maps are quite often prepared, yet not used. And how many sites there are that invested heavily into Enterprise Architecture 4-7 years ago, and those diagrams are nowhere to be seen, even though it is about time when they are supposed to get somewhere close to the “to be” and refer to the said diagrams to see how close they are.

Yet someone who participated in any of the above will be at the top of the list for the next contract requiring similar skills, and will be expected to proceed as they did before - with similar results.

The cost of that anti-patterns is not the cost of a resource going their own way - it is the cost of IT progressing forward with their eyes closed, without adequate modelling. Which is much higher.