When working with Technical Architects - be C-3PO not Chewbacca

I wrote this a few years ago when I was playing around with WordPress blogs. So you never know - some of you may have seen this before (unlikely).

Some of you may find this offensive but this is no critique of personal stature.

Many of the technical architects I have worked with remind me of Ewoks.

The best ones remind me of Ewoks in fact.

Those short cuddly hairy unintelligible ones who took a shine to Princess Leia.

Those ones are particularly like Ewoks.

Ewoks - for those of you who did not grow up in the 70s and 80s are Star Wars creature characters who live on the forest moon of Endor. A celestial body near enough to project a force field to protect the 2nd Death Star but far enough away not to be contaminated by showers of highly radiated and contaminated debris when it exploded. But I digress.

Ewoks are good. Ewoks are resourceful. Ewoks are brave.

Ewoks when working together can take on - and win against -adversaries with significantly greater numbers, better weapons and flashy white polycarbonate armour.

But they need motivation and coordination to do that.

Ewoks operate in tightly knit clans where different Ewoks have different skills. All the skills are useful in their own way. A natural order often establishes itself and so you get a Chief to be the figurehead and and a Shaman to provide the spiritual and intellectual guidance. Alongside the warriors, hunters, animal-pelt snood-makers and so forth.

Same goes for Architects.
And they are individually useful in their own way, some have skills in applications, some data, some in infrastructure, some in multiple disciplines (a rare breed of Ewok - keep hold of these) - but to get the best out if them - you need to get them working towards a useful common goal.

So how to communicate this?

Well - I've seen some projects where highly skilled, confident, brash loud and larger than life architects are dropped in to architecture teams and there is a tendency to ask them to direct the teams - or they may just decide to do this themselves if they get no firm opposition.

To me - this is like when Chewbacca first met the Ewoks.

Chewbacca was a Wookie. A hairy, arboreal species, who much like Ewoks live in tree-houses suspended from gigantic forest trees. Very similar to Ewoks really. The only differences being...well...about 6 more feet in height and tens more decibels of growling noise.

Chewbacca, along with the rest of the Skywalker Scooby Gang landed on Endor, got caught in a Ewok trap and growled a lot at them. This did not win him friends with the Ewoks. In short - he was about to be turned into a Wookie gyros.

C-3PO - by contrast - was a bit different to the Ewoks. He was a robot, he was covered in gold plating, he was a bit prim and proper.

But - he did know how to speak their language. And he did know how to pass on the importance of capturing and destroying the force field base station (see - it was a semi-relevant digression). And - with a little help from the Force he did get the Ewoks to accept him as their saviour...OK maybe I need to stop right there.