DZone

Some days I think that life as a software architect runs like the story from the LEGO Movie:

“We have to do the right thing,
unblock creativity,
save the world,
free the master-builders,
prevent the destruction of everything,
beat the bad guy,

but also — fall in love with the business,
help them to understand why they feel the way they do,
guide them to enlightenment,
so we can all live in peace and prosperity together.”

There are so many obstacles to success and a big part of managing your software architecture is getting the business folks on board, getting them to understand what you are saying, why you are saying it, and convincing them that the changes you are proposing are worth the investment. But why? Why is it so difficult to convince them, and why are we not all on the same page to begin with?

I will present one idea about why businesses and architects see the world so differently and, then, I’ll give some tips for how to manage your architecture successfully, even given the challenges. I’ll show you how to be a master builder and save the world.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

As software architects, those of us who aren’t lost in our ivory towers, really LOVE our software. It’s our baby. We want to look after it, nurture it, tend and care for it, and help it to grow and get better. We understand how it works, what it’s good at, and what it’s bad at. We long to remove all the cruft to simplify and polish it. We are motivated from within to do the RIGHT THING with our software. Solving difficult technical challenges and building beautiful software is what gets us out of bed in the morning. We are “intrinsically” motivated. We don’t need any external impetus to do what we do; we do what we do because we love it.

But, now, let’s look at other people in our organizations. Not everyone is motivated from within. Not everyone sees the bigger picture. Some people are motivated by very different things, such as simpler, more superficial things. Some people just want to hit their targets, make the revenue figures, or meet some metric or other. As our careers progress and we rise up within our organization, we tend to find more and more people who are motivated this way. I’m sure they are lovely people, and I don’t want to tar them with the “pointy-haired boss” brush but, well, there certainly are some parallels with the famous Dilbert cartoons. Some people, higher up in the organization are not there because they care about the product, or the customer, or this thing or that thing. What gets them going is hitting the mark, pleasing their boss, getting a bonus, or whatever else. These people are motivated by external effects. They are “extrinsically” motivated. If you took away the external factors motivating them, they wouldn’t know what to do.

Of course, I’m simplifying a situation that is much more complex in reality. Not everyone is one thing or the other. Not all bosses are extrinsically motivated and not all engineers are intrinsically motivated, but there are some trends there. Perhaps it makes perfect sense for those above to be extrinsically motivated, as they ultimately need to please their shareholders and that means making the numbers.

Some traits and consequences of these types of motivation I’ve summarized in the table below. (If you’d like to read more about this topic please see the references below).

Source: DZone