Even Architects get the Blues

After exchanging friendly glances we started talking; exchanging names, discussing offbeat eating joints, and figuring out that we were from the same city. Then came the question…

“what do you do?“

“I’m an Enterprise Architect”, I replied.

”Architect, oh so you are in construction?” said the lady sitting next to me. Not going into details I just played along – “Yaa… kind of.”

“What do you specialize in, buildings, bridges, dams, roads?” – Suddenly my mind starting to make the connect - applications (buildings), integration (brides), dams (storage), roads (API’s). In my fantasy I started to enjoy the conversation and answered, “In my profile I’ve to take care of everything so basically I’m not a specialist, but I kind of deal with everything and make the connections, to make sure everything fits together.”

“Ahh, I understand, so you make sure that bridges connect with roads, and roads connect the buildings, and dams are built near the rivers and so on.”

“Absolutely !!!“, I was amazed how easy it was for her to understand this architectural concept.

“looks as though you have lot of ground to cover”, she laughed. “ It seems like lot of work.”

“Yaa, a lot of it is to study and validate the designs other people have done.”

“Ohhh….” A thoughtful silence prevailed, as if she lost me there, while I was lost in my own whims of parallelism in construction architecture and enterprise architecture.

“Our family owns a large piece of land in the city, any suggestions?”, my thoughts got interrupted by this, and now I was struggling whether to come clean or find a way to cut the conversation short.

“The problem is, we don’t know what kind of house we want to build…….”, she continued.

Suddenly, it started to connect with the situation of the irrational process of building a software, where no one knows exactly what needs to be build. As she started giving me a few details, several threads began to race in my mind, and occupied in its own processing and picking up specifics from her descriptions, I started babbling...

“Ok so you mentioned that the plot have a huge area, so you can have anything between 2 to 12 rooms (horizontal scaling), and the plan should be such that the rooms can be easily added or deleted (auto scaling). Ideally we should leave some space on each side of the area for ventilation (margins). We also have to figure out how many floors are allowed by the civil authority (extent of vertical scaling), perhaps we don’t need it now, but later we can think of adding more floors. The issue with this approach is that extension will depend on a lot of factors – do we have enough water supply, do we build the water tank at the bottom or top of the house? What should be the sewage plan, how about ventilation….“

“Wait wait wait..… I haven’t even told you what I want.”

“Ohh sorry, we are not used to having crisp requirements, we derive our requirements from the vagaries and interpreting the hints dropped here and there?”

“Really?“, she exclaimed in disbelief.

“Yes really, all we get is - we do not know what we want right now, you can propose something with your discretion, but make sure you manage the scope so that if we change our mind later it is easily changeable.”

We are also reminded of few more things - Make sure your suggestion is cost effective and low maintenance. Take special care that the mistakes of past are not repeated and there are no faults or gaps like what we have in previous constructions – the floor should not vibrate when you walk on it (performance), walls have enough insulation (security), make provisions to accommodate extra feature we might need in future. Follow the norms, if you are doing anything out of ordinary explain us in detail and convince us why we should put money into this.

We are also reminded to take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction.“, I took a pause.

“Well that doesn’t help much right, does it?“, she continued…

I made a wry face,” We also go and visit similar buildings in the nearby area, as that’s the first benchmark. It is implicit that our construction has to be better than that.” I added.

“sounds complicated but, there must be ways to figure out what they need. I mean you have been working for long time…”, she was bewildered by the so called requirement riddle and poked me further.

 “Yes of course, we have to find each and every stake holder, I mean visitors, family members to see how they want this building to be, who will use which space, what are their interests. Children have their point of view, parents have theirs and parents’ parents have theirs. We talk to each member to figure out what they need, but with vigilant maneuvers so as to not raise the expectations but also not to disappoint. In these tête-à-têtes the constraints begins to unfold, for example accommodating the old AC’s as we will not purchase new. Grandma is too old to climb the ladders, the lady of the house wants a garden. Maybe we could commercialize the place in future with minimum refactoring. There is a noisy neighbor, so some rooms have to be soundproof. The elder son is soon getting married and plans to stay in the same house, and yes his girlfriend like dogs…”

“Oh wow, so you need to know all of this? But there could be conflicts, who make the final decisions?“, she kept the ball rolling.

“The head, but he keeps reminding us to not bother him with details. Your job is to develop overall plans for this house. Get the big picture. We don’t need to choose the color of the walls at this time. That reminds me - I read an interesting article on how color of walls can impact your mood, so we might need different colors for my office space and bedroom. This is a latest trend and you should be the one suggesting me all this. Anyways, take your time, but send me first draft in 48 hours. Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design since these blueprints will be used only for construction bids and loan approvals from bank.

“Hold on.. loan approvals – If the money is not figured out yet, why have you started doing all this work?“, she almost yelled, perplexed at the futility of all this work.

“Unfortunately, it works like that, we first have to have a high-level plan, details for expenditure etc., only then we get the budget.” I explained.

“And what the hell are construction bids for? – If you have already done all analysis, why would you consider someone else to do the work now ?”

“That’s the strange reality – In the end someone does a nice vastu presentation and steals the deal….”

“And what about you?”, her tone picking up on how unfair it is....

“We still work… present everything to them on a platter, we keep poking them about what is going wrong. They come to us when they are stuck…. We hold the responsibility that things should not go awry and that we are aligned to our vision….”

“Wow, you hold the real responsibility then, you must be paid well.”

“Hmm… not really since we don’t specialize in anything, the big paychecks go to the experts with niche skills“

 “I see… money is not everything, and I’m sure you get a lot of recognition and credit for being the master minds and for ensuring the best possible outcome.“, she was trying to find some solace.

“Well…. Unfortunately we move to the next project and are forgotten quickly, we architect the building but sometimes not even invited at the inauguration. Everyone talks about the fancy looks (interface and UX) and no one appreciates the backbone.”

“That sucks !!! What is your motivation for staying in such a job….”, she sounded disappointed.

“Well… I love my job nevertheless. It’s an important role, like a woman who binds and keeps the family together, thinking of everyone and everything, mediating fights and sorting issues, without expecting much in return. Sometimes she has to be strict because she sees the bigger picture and how a small wrong move today can have big effect in future. Someone who is always seen as complaining and shouting but for everyone else’s sake and betterment.”

“well, I’m impressed that you are so optimistic and also assured that each building have such an intellectual backbone behind it. Next time when I cross a bridge or see a beautiful house , I’ll surely think of you”.

“That’s very sweet of you!!! “ , I replied.

I unlocked my computer, I had azure portal open. I started wondering, what if she asks, what is this? How would I explain what Cloud have to do with the construction…