I can always tell I'm in a room full of programmers when they say "coding" is the most important part of making software. Oh really? That's a bit like saying the person laying asphalt on the road is the most important part of making the road. Oh, hey, what about the Engineers who designed the roading material? The Planners who decided where the road should go. The Project Manager who actually gets people to do things, and stops management from changing their mind about where the road should go, and when it should be created.
Nope, just the guy physically laying the road.
I had a big debate with a programmer about why Business Analysts, Project Managers, and even Enterprise Architects get paid more than programmers. Programmers create something from nothing. Without them, there would be no software. And that's indeed correct. But has the problem of getting software working in large enterprise environments been down to a lack of technology?
Generally not. It's more down to those human factors like what are the requirements, who is the stakeholder, who has responsibility for this project, who's got the budget, what are we doing, when is this ready, why did we build this when we could have bought that, all of these soft skills, they're the reasons why software projects fail. Not the software (generally, don't find an edge case and be all Aha!).
That's why I'm working on becoming an Enterprise Architect. I can barely code, and I'm OK with that. Because I do know about the structure of the business, the canonical data model with an organisation, the high level enterprise applications that support that information, and the infrastructure that support the applications. Sure I'm not an expert in any one of those areas, but being knowledgeable combined with being able to talk to the CIO and the CEO with them understanding what I'm saying, that's a rare skill indeed.
Nope, just the guy physically laying the road.
I had a big debate with a programmer about why Business Analysts, Project Managers, and even Enterprise Architects get paid more than programmers. Programmers create something from nothing. Without them, there would be no software. And that's indeed correct. But has the problem of getting software working in large enterprise environments been down to a lack of technology?
Generally not. It's more down to those human factors like what are the requirements, who is the stakeholder, who has responsibility for this project, who's got the budget, what are we doing, when is this ready, why did we build this when we could have bought that, all of these soft skills, they're the reasons why software projects fail. Not the software (generally, don't find an edge case and be all Aha!).
That's why I'm working on becoming an Enterprise Architect. I can barely code, and I'm OK with that. Because I do know about the structure of the business, the canonical data model with an organisation, the high level enterprise applications that support that information, and the infrastructure that support the applications. Sure I'm not an expert in any one of those areas, but being knowledgeable combined with being able to talk to the CIO and the CEO with them understanding what I'm saying, that's a rare skill indeed.