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War Of The Wonks
Program management, for some reason, seems to have more than it's fair share of wonks. For those of you who don't know what "wonk" means, it's "Without Normal Knowledge", which is a nice way of saying educated beyond your natural intelligence.
I just saw "War of the Worlds" at the theatre, and it reminded me of something a very smart person said to me one day. I was talking to him about how program management, like all good architecture, is something that must be constructed and built, like a logical house. He asked, "Do you think of architecture as a building science?" I said of course, and he asked, "Isn’t it a bit more like movie directing?"
He had a good point. When you are architecting a solution for somebody, you are bringing together pieces from all over: workers for this part and that, building materials, etc. Whether its software or physical buildings, the result you get is the experience of the user; therefore you are preparing for and putting on a presentation for them. Ultimately, the people who live everyday with your work will be your judges. A good director doesn't just spend his time putting together the physical pieces of the movie -- he spends as much time coordinating all the resources into the structure he is creating. It's as much about teamwork, collusion, and feeling as it is logic and reasoning.
It's something to consider. Many times we're looking for some new logical concept to help us, or some new way of breaking up the workers or the work. Perhaps, just perhaps, sometimes we need a little more directing and a little less analyzing.
BTW -- WOTW was very good. Spielberg mailed parts of it in, but with a great director like that and the budget he had, wow, it was something to behold. Definitely a movie to put on the Christmas DVD list for the family.
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