Getting "Hands-On" With Technology
Beyond The Hype
Products are continually being introduced or updated offering new capabilities or resolving known issues that enable the creation of faster, better and cheaper solutions. Some claims may turn out to be nothing more than hype but for others there might well be some benefits, albeit with possible side effects, that merit further investigation.
When, for example, a claim is made that a new product is ten times quicker or simpler to use than a well known product that you currently use heavily, you can't help but want to take a look to see if it's true, especially if it might improve quality or speed delivery. It's time to get hands-on.
Upgrading open source libraries can also introduce unexpected changes if you don't read the small print on the release notes carefully. I remember one particular library that introduced a new encryption mechanism on configuration data that dramatically impacted on performance taking us outside of our customer Service Level Agreement (SLA).
Growing Your Capability
As a Technical Architect, it's really important to keep up with industry trends and technologies (however self-indulgent or challenging that might be 😊). It's also desirable to go deep into some of those technologies in order to gain real expertise and earn / retain your SME (Subject Matter Expert) status.
There's only so much reading around that you can do before you have to roll up your sleeves in order to put theory into practice to see if it actually delivers on what it promises. It's time to get hands-on.
There's nothing like getting hands-on to really get a good understanding of how something actually works and it may not at all line up to your original thinking based on what you read about the technology.
Time spent with the "hood up" can often take you to a far deeper technical level of the technology in question and cause you to potentially re-think your design approach. It can cause you to read up on some related areas of technology that you've not looked at before but now recognise as relevant to your design considerations. This happened to me when I was trying to improve my AWS CloudFront cache-hit ratio for this website.
Innovation Opportunity: Show Me, Don't Tell Me
New products and capabilities offer opportunities for innovation. It's one thing to talk about what might be done but it's another thing to demonstrate it. In my career I've seen a number of working prototypes turn into real product offerings and win big business as a result. The customer awards the prize to the one who can "show me, don't tell me". 😊 (See my previous blog article entitled Opening New Doors To New Possibilities.)
Dare to dream what technology might do! It's time to get hands-on.
Mitigating Risk Early
Whilst Project Managers are often highly risk averse, most architects fall into the "Risk Explorer" category. That's because risk is an up-front consideration when selecting building blocks for solutions and for proving that emergent designs meet the intentional architecture.
Only proven building blocks will ever be considered but that doesn't prevent projects from exploring different options by including proving activities in advance of building block selection.
Spike activities on Agile projects allow up-front proving of technologies. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) differentiates between features (things the customer wants) and enablers (things that enable developers to deliver the features that the customer wants) and refers to this approach as "building the architectural runway". It's time to get hands-on.
The SAFe approach is advantageous because the architectural runway concept in effect supports up-front design (via a dedicated programme increment for the enabler functionality that will support implementation of the new features in the following programme increment) that might otherwise not be so successful when relying on purely emergent architecture.
IT Life Blood
It's not enough to keep up with the conversation, you also need to stay in the game.
Getting hands-on with technology is the life blood of any IT company. Failing to get hands-on sees that life blood drain away and will ultimately cause the death of any IT company.
Some people are just naturally wired to play with new technology and are often the first to lose interest when those technologies become business-as-usual. Such individuals are to be encouraged to explore new products and share their learning. (See my previous blog article entitled Starters And Finishers.)
What time is it? Oh yeah, it's time to get hands-on!
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Tim Simpson
31st March, 2023
#LifeAtCapgemini