Don't get me wrong regarding the title, I think Project Managers are usually useful and give a comfort factor to working in IT as in they always know what you should be doing etc. when quite often working to put systems in place I don't even know what day it is... Anyway, I was asked along to a meeting which included a discussion on how the organisation could document the upgrade of a data centre from one service level to a new one. "What we don't want to do," the barrow boy like PM said "is implement this new hosting solution without documenting everything within it which needs support!" He said this after he had just trailed around everyone with a piece of kit in the data centre asking the same questions, "What does your kit do, what software does it have on it and who is the best contact within the business?" It's becoming a feature if my life at the moment but, I said "Have you ever heard of Enterprise Architecture?" The answer was no, but after a quick diagram, he got that excited he was onto the Project Team manager telling him how much this would help him and so on. The trouble is, his boss is in meetings until next week, then on his hols until mid-October, and it isn't the sort of decision he can take without authorisation, blah blah....
So like the title to this post says, even PM's understand. What is it about senior management that they don't get it? EA isn't invasive or time consuming or for that matter life changing! It is, quite simply, a thinking tool. A structured way to document. I wish for a Nike moment... i.e. JUST DO IT!!
I continue my search for the answer. Actually, it has just occured to me that perhaps, in true Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy form, I should be looking for the question!
