James Taylor (no, not that James Taylor, the other one) had an interesting article about SOA’s, agility, and architecture. While the article is a riff on another article (which makes this a meta-riff, I suppose) , it got me to thinking about the development lifecycle.

I think it is very ironic that in ETL and data-oriented programming we run into the same contradictions all the time:

1. Development time is the smallest cost in the entire process in terms of time, resources, and money.
2. Software development is scrutinized to death.
3. On-time delivery is significantly more important than long-term cost savings, even if it impacts long-term functionality.

Now, I don’t think this is done out of malice or spite for IT.  A lot of it may simply be because development is the one part of the development lifecycle that can be influenced by the project sponsor.  However, as practitioners we need to make sure that information architecture is focused on consistently delivering tangible value to our organization.  This means effectively communicating the true overall cost for systems development and making sure that the organization as a whole understands what we are doing.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 4:59 am and is filed under ETL, Information Architecture, People, Practices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.