What kind of architect am I?

• A questioner - to discover the essence of a thing to understand it
• Think in terms of systems of softwares
  • Nothing operates in isolation
  • What has been built is done through the collective intelligence and biases of those who built it
• Philosophical
  • What does it mean?
  • Why are we doing this?
  • What should it do?
  • Even though it’s possible, is that sufficient reason that it should be done?
• Practicer of neutral observation
• Find out what I need to know as it’s needed
  • Always learning, and just-in-time
• Not particularly technical, nor do I think I was a particularly good programmer
• Less focus on the ‘right way’ or ‘doctrines’, far more interested in with appropriateness and least worst
  • fads and silver bullets I’m skeptical of
• Getting better with ambiguity and uncertainty - treating them as stressors and constraints
• Technology is easy, people are challenging, organisations are hard and complex
• Most of the time it’s an organisational situation, which manifests as a technological problem (situation)
• Vehement disliker of assumptions
• Willing to change my mind and adopt alternative perspectives, accepting that I may come across as flakey and indecisive
• Liable to overthinking, or is this digging for reality and discovering what exists
• Accept I don’t know very much, though always learning
  • Consistently refer back to books to remind myself of detail
• There is no right, wrong, best, worst - just appropriate for the given situation, which will be subject to tradeoffs