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How does someone become qualified to be a senior information technologist (architect, senior project manager, principal, and so on)? Or are these titles given out fairly liberally with no real standard of what the title signifies or what that person can do? From what I can see these titles are fairly arbitrary where the only common denominator is the number of years (usually 7 - 15 years) of experience the person has in the information technology field. This is not the case in other technical fields such as civil engineering or medical field. If someone is a doctor, it can be assumed that person can do their job in their particular medical specialty.

Who is really qualified to architect your systems?

Qualifying senior information technologists is a critical issue. Over the years, I have seen many IT projects fail or go on-and-on that have caused large companies to fail. On the other hand, I have seen many companies succeed because they had talented, experienced people creating great IT systems that added extreme value to the business.

People hold many important titles with the word architect, senior IT project manager, and principal, but can they do the job? They may be qualified or not. It is hard to tell. Even if they deserve the title, can they perform in that given specialty? With IT getting so broad and specialized, an architect can be asked to architect something they do not know how to architect. This is like asking a dentist to do heart surgery.

Has IT relied too much on tools, training certifications, and methodologies to create great technologists? For architects, senior project managers, principals, and other types of senior information technologists, there is a dire need for an apprenticeship program. Seems like there is a need for an internship program for information technologists much like doctors have to go through after they complete medical school.

Another question is where is academia on this? I may be out of the loop, but I do not know of any universities that are addressing this issue of training senior information technologists to solve real-world business problems. Seems like most universities that excel in IT are focused on basic research and applied research, and not on IT architecture and real-world solutions.

See The Tech Evangelist’s posting, Architecture Frameworks Don’t Make Architects on the downfalls of tools and methodologies in making great IT architects.

Collaboration is an interesting word. The thesaurus notes that the word, “collaboration”, has a positive connotation except in wartime (ex. working with the enemy). With that note, how do you define business collaboration? Is strategic business collaboration essential to have an optimized supply chain? Can businesses be competitors, but still collaborate to optimize their supply chain? How does Business-to-Business (B2B) system integration relate to business collaboration? Paul Cousins has created an interesting business collaboration model that can be used to define the full spectrum of B2B relationships. In this 2D model all levels of business collaboration can be defined by the degree of dependency (Y-axis) in the business relationship and the degree of certainty (X-axis) in the relationship.

Cousins’ Business Collaboration Model - degree of Dependency and Certainty in a Business Relationship

Below are the four quadrants of the business collaboration model:

Traditional (Independent / uncertain relationship) - Lower Left Quadrant. A traditional-type of B2B relationship is weak. Both businesses are highly independent and they have no on-going relationship with each other. From a supply chain perspective, this is a transactional type of relationship. Examples of this is any type of auction like eBay auction, reverse auctions, and commodity-type markets. There is no value-add to the relationship except for the life of the transaction. From a B2B perspective, there is no motivation to do system-to-system interfaces to exchange electronic documents except through a third-party service provider that provides the electronic marketplace or auction.

Opportunistic (Dependent / Uncertain) - Upper Left Quadrant. An opportunistic-type of B2B relationship is weak, but there are select opportunities to do business together, and may be more opportunities in the future. Example of this could be a seasonal supplier or a supplier that is attempting to establish a long-term relationship with a retailer or manufacturer. From a B2B perspective, the “cost of admission” may be very high for a supplier. The large retailer or manufacturer may require several Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) interfaces (purchase order, advance ship notice, invoice, and so on) just for the supplier to do occasional business with a large business customer.

Tactical Collaboration (Independent / Certain) - Lower Right Quadrant. A tactical-type of B2B relationship in many ways may be a missed opportunity or an opportunity waiting to happen. Example of this is when two businesses are regularly doing businesses together, but at least one of the businesses has not realize the extent of the relationship. There may be millions of dollars and thousands of purchase transactions being exchanged, but both businesses are not collaborating strategically to optimize the relationship. From a B2B perspective, this current relationship is more than likely costly in terms of business transaction costs (transactions like purchase orders, ship status, payments, and so on). In this type of B2B relationship, all or most business transactions exchanged between the businesses are probably manual and / or the business customer may be paying premium pricing for the supplier’s goods or services (example: paying publish rates for shipping versus contract rates). This is where one or both businesses need to evaluate the relationship and either distance themselves from the relationship or develop a strategic relationship to reduce costs and improve the overall value-add to the relationship.

Strategic Collaboration (Dependent / Certain) - Higher Right Quadrant. A strategic-type of B2B relationship is where both businesses keep their business relationships optimized to minimize cost and to maximize value to the end-customer. Many International and large businesses as well as their suppliers seek this type of relationship. Strategic business collaboration is key in such industries as the automotive and electronics industries where all the businesses in the supply chain are dependent on each other and they have a long-term relationship with each other. From a B2B integration perspective, these businesses may exchange any where from three to 50 different EDI-transactions between their systems to minimize costs, maximize speed-to-market, and optimize value-add to the end-customer.

See JanHusdal’s posting, Biting the hand that feeds. Or why all firms are snakes, for more discussion on Paul Cousins’ business collaboration mode.

It use to be that brand creation was governed by the product manufacturer. If a company had the marketing dollars and the marketing talent, a company could make about any product a successful brand. Think bottled water, cars, cell phones, and so on. Now with the advent of social media, digital-based products, and the internet, brand creation has become a shared endeavor between the product creator and the social community that consumes the product. The definition of the word “brand” changes. With the birth of social media and the internet, the word “brand” becomes more than “a trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or a manufacturer”. The brand becomes more of an experience and it has a social community that is centered around the particular product or service. Think iPhone, PlayStation III, and so on.

Brand Creation Between the Product and the Community

ServantOfChaos’ posting, Life at the Edge of Your Brand, describe this paradigm shift in brand creation as follows: “On the one hand there is the product of service that a business has spent time and effort creating. On the other is the population of consumers you are hoping will engage with your offering. And in the place where the two collide is the brand – but this is not your grandfather’s brand – it is the brand that is created in the flux and chaos of interaction between your offering and those who consume, use, engage, love or hate it”. Now, there are less and less opportunities for manufacturers and service providers to control their brand creation. Product owners can no longer control the users of their product using mass media. Now, more and more brands are being created by the user community where the manufacter’s intended marketing and branding plan does not survive “first contact” with the user community.

With internet media, brands are experienced, used, engaged, loved, and hated. On one side of brand creation, the Arc of Satisfaction, you have users that are using the product as it was intended. On the other side of the brand, you have the Arc of Experience where users come up with new ways to use the product or do a “mash-up” or re-mix of the product with other products. The social community now controls the brand. The product owner can at best collaborate with the user community to improve and transform the product.