Work 3.0

...“I have a developer that does that too.” <-- A valid retort. The answer is in the form of a question: where is the line between developer and architect? Is it just an elevated sense of ‘developer-ness’ that makes someone an ultimate geek / architect? A form of enlightenment in the tech community? More of the same, or is it a different skill altogether? Developers are horrible salesmen, but architects can “sell the vision”. Developers are infamous for lacking social skills, while architects consider themselves well-traveled and somewhat superior socially (whether it's just in their heads is still up for debate). They definitely have these aforementioned "soft-skills" that sometimes lean their loyal followers to the left or right, and make things happen. This role can’t be understated. While there are overlapping skills between a developer and an architect, the core competencies are distinct. Below shows the layered approach to architect and developer on Ziptask. So we wanted to dive into the brain of a software architect, explore the nuances of technical creativity, and hopefully shed light on what real tangible benefits are when opting to include a software architect’s involvement on your project.  Parnell Springmeyer, a seasoned entrepreneur and software architect on the Ziptask platform, took time to be interviewed for this week’s PM Spotlight. His background is deep in tech startups, and has performed amazingly well on Ziptask’s Product Studio offering.   Q: Parnell, how do you describe the category of “Software Architecture” and how did you get into it? A: Software Architecture is multi-faceted, particularly so in small projects and companies. Software Architecture for a project that is the product for a startup or mature business involves the difficult act of marrying the business to the technology. Principally, I'm responsible for translating higher strata vision and desires [for the product] into an execution path because it's impossible to “have it all” at the same time! You don't even want that anyway because most products evolve rapidly as customers begin to use it and your implementation must evolve with the new data and requests flowing in. Further down the road of a product's life I also have to interleave maintenance of technical debt and bug resolution into the roadmap; this decision making can only be informed by a clear understanding of the business, its customers, and the direction the ship is sailing in. Early in a company's life, it's about finding the balance between what the business needs and what the technology can do in as short a time as possible with as little future debt as is possible. The architect does that. I became one out of necessity – I started as a simple code wrangler but by building my own technology startup I learned, slowly, that a clearer understanding of the business and how it evolved was essential, even critical. Without that understanding, the product cannot evolve, you don't have a business if your product can't adapt to the constantly changing stimulus the market and your customers are providing.   Q: What do you love the most about being a software architect and what do you hate? A: It's a very creative act, on the level of orchestration because we're programmers too but we are also business people. So really it's a “lifting” of the programmer's craft into a realm beyond mere artistic satiation, it has form and also function that impacts people's lives by making something easier, better, or fun. Hate is too strong – I wouldn't be doing this if I hated it. I prefer to say that the burden of responsibility can be tough sometimes, without a fun project it can grind you down. There's also the very difficult process of making your non-technical collaborators hear you, many people see the facade of technology (you're not supposed to notice that it works!) but don't understand the extent of the iceberg supporting it.   Q: What sort of critical thinking and strategic capabilities does a software architect bring to the table? A: There are many. A software architect spans the gap between the strategic consultant and the developer team, and tries to create value in savings in the most strategic of forms. There’s much to explain but I can focus on a couple of nuances of this role. The engagement of a software architect on a project is primarily targeted at ways to drive costs down, and increase the reuse and strategic use of existing/in progress development. In a startup environment, (which may differ in many ways from corporate enterprises), things move incredibly fast. Calculations are made while in motion, as the team is running 100 miles an hour towards an initial minimum viable product. As such, the ‘path of least resistance’ is often the choice of winning teams. This is both a blessing and a curse. The architect’s job becomes slightly more complex, in having to embrace the realities of the time limitations and wrestled with the goals of long-term reusability and extensibility of the software technology platform itself.  Driving cost down would equate to the fastest possible deliverable for the least amount of effort. Maximizing the reuse and strategic use of assets, would materialize itself as laser focused effort with full extensibility built in. Example thoughts that run through my mind: “How can I build this in such a way so as to not paint myself in a corner?” “What would be the right way to do this without taking too much time?” “I know it can’t be perfect, the approach I want to take will require too much time … but how can I at least make it clean and legible?” “Is there a component party built for this small piece of the functionality?”   Q: What’s the difference between a software architect and a good developer? Do you really need both? A: That’s a great question.  Application development has inherently a focus that is limited to the scope of the application that the developer is working on. There are clear boundary lines and focal points that require an immense amount of energy and attention. Developers are focused on user interaction, responsiveness, behaviors, data baggage, latencies, user controls, and all sorts of other typical application development areas like error handling, quality of code, physical real estate on the user interface, etc. A good software architect, however, will have his head in the clouds half the time, whilst manhandling some area of code, and white-boarding incessantly. An architect is essentially the pragmatic thinker and ‘seer’ of vision. He/she has to foresee the entire technological asset-base before it exists, even if that means conjuring up inventive placeholders for systems are entities that have yet to be even scratched out on paper. The holistic view is ever-present, ever-aware, and long term goals of the stakeholders are brought to light at various opportunities, especially to the benefit of the developer audience. Q: How does a software architect interact with a project manager on Ziptask? A: Because Ziptask is “Fully Managed Outsourcing”, the Ziptask project managers are engaged in every aspect of your project, and will pull in the use of a software architect as they feel it is needed. (It should be noted that some Ziptask project managers have been software architects in different roles within their career, another great selling point of Ziptask.) If you feel it seems to be applicable and within the scope of your effort to have architectural guidance, simply mention it to your project manager (hopefully in the beginning of the project, so as to be included as a part of the estimate), and he or she will be sure to incorporate the use of a software architect seamlessly into one or more milestones. This becomes especially valuable in the beginning of the project because a great amount of savings of time and money can be accomplished with a good architecture in place.  Q: What would you say has been your greatest value add to projects that you have been a part of in the software architect role? A: Because I’ve been a part of several startups, (one of which was recently acquired), I have a unique perspective. There are various different shortcuts and components that can be leveraged to take a massive amount of work and shrink it into a box that can be easily manipulated and time boxed for even the smallest of teams. This is a skill that you don’t learn in college. And you can simply put a job posting on monster.com to recruit for it. It’s something that comes within the start of community and is held closely to the chest. Great architects in the startup world can do amazing things, with very little money, very little time, and very little resources to support them.   ___ Summing it all up… Taking a step back, and looking at things from an enterprise perspective, the software architect has been the modern-day equivalent of a Thomas Jefferson, crafting language and nuance to literary masterpieces. As a formal role in the corporate information technology departments across all boundaries, (not just limited to the United States course), the software architect is worth his weight in gold, saving corporate America literally billions of dollars in unnecessary information technology expenditure. This is a best case scenario. The worst/opposite situation would be that software architects, when left to their own devices, may over-architect their solutions, create unnecessary complexity, and drive costs up where only a simple solution was needed. While those pitfalls remain, with a good project manager in place, and limited scope, a software architect can multiply the effectiveness of any developers involved in the project and are a critical component to a successful engagement in the information technology arena.  

A: Yes. But their working hours are a little off the beaten path, with accommodations made for numerous time zones for their numerous clients. It can be a little bit exhausting if you’re not prepared for it, but typically you’ll get used to it within the first couple years of your career and then it’s easier from there. Once you develop a network of your own and have people that you’ve worked with for years, you’re able to establish a good rapport with your clientele and freelancer network, which makes life a lot easier. You have to learn to depend on people, trust them, but also hold them accountable. You’re only as good as your weakest developer.

But the numbers hide an important point: Outsourcing to freelancers online is difficult and painful. From time-zone challenges, to language barriers, to the nuances of fumbling through technical materials to culminate somehow in a decent outcome for a project… There are far too many irritants and sources of friction involved with outsourcing to freelancers online to justify the effort. It’s no surprise that oDesk and Elance have such a polarized customer reaction. Customers in the space either love or hate the services. There typically is no “in-between”. This was the driving force behind creating Ziptask, the first fully managed outsourcing platform designed to solve the challenges of outsourcing to freelancers. The core of Ziptask’s model is its “Fully Managed” approach. This means that project managers, the real hero’s, will take on the dirty work for the customer, and put together a solid plan, execute it, and deliver back results. It’s critical to engage the right project manager, because customers are trusting that person to position themselves in a place of responsibility and also act on behalf of the customer with a deep sense of ownership. Jeremy Reither, a project manager on Ziptask, took time to be interviewed for this week’s PM Spotlight. His background is deep on the managed technology services area, and has a strong business acumen. Jeremy answers some of the tough questions about the tough job. Q: How is this different from oDesk? A: The jobs on Ziptask are Fully Managed, which makes it possible for anybody to hire freelancers, from small businesses to enterprise, regardless of whether they know how software development works. In this way clients don’t have to get their hands dirty in the time consuming, often tedious project management work, or even say one word to the freelance programmer living somewhere else in the world. As a client you let the project manager do what they’re good at, represent your best interests and ensure your needs are met. oDesk does not offer anything like this, neither does Elance.  Q: Where does a Project Manager experience the most challenge and how does he overcome? A: Every project is different, which is part of why I enjoy the work I do. But the first few meetings with a new client are often the most challenging, mostly due to the fact that I work hard to grasp the requirements of the new project, understand the client’s pain points, internalize their mission, all with the goal of making informed recommendations about how to proceed and converting all that information into actionable instructions for a freelancer. But it’s that challenging part of the project that is also the most rewarding. When I’m able to put myself in the client’s shoes and understand the project from their perspective I’m much better able to deliver what they need. Q: How much effort is spent on video/chat engagement with the freelancers versus refinement and polish on my project documents/wireframes, etc. A: In a perfect world each client would provide project documents / wireframes which are usable as-is, and we could get started building right away. But more often than not clients (understandably) don’t have deep experience in requirements analysis and creation of technical specifications. For that reason, and because it makes good sense to identify issues early, I spend as much time as makes sense polishing requirements and documentation up front. Non-ambiguous and well-though-out documentation then in turn helps minimize not only the amount of video/chat time required to guide freelancers, but also reduces the amount of time spent on testing and quality assurance (QA). Ultimately the up-front time investment improves the likelihood that the project deliverable(s) will be completed on-time, on-budget, and to specification. Also… Ziptask just released a new offering called Product Studio, which essentially addresses the issue upfront. Product studio packages allow customers to immediately engage with a team that has worked together before (usually), booking put together a solid set of requirements and mockups that will catapult the project forward. Q: Where does the PM find the freelancers to work on the project?  A: Ziptask has its own network of freelancers; thousands of them around the world. They have also hand-picked groups of software companies that act as channel partners with their own employees who can be used for your project as well, depending on the type of work and the needs that you have at the time. Q: What about the costs involved with using a project manager? Does it still make sense? A: First, project management within the software development life-cycle shouldn’t be stripped out or circumvented for short-term savings when doing so will result in greater costs and risks in the long run. Second, I believe this is the wrong question. That is, it’s not just the nominal expense of having a project manager that should be considered. You should also factor in the amount of time and money that is saved by using the right tools, the right team, going in the right direction and arriving at the desired result. A good project manager will deliver a net positive, despite what it might feel like when you stare down a project cost estimate for the first time. If there are situations (rare) that having a project manager in place does not make sense, you will still benefit from his involvement by the time that you save engaged in prescreening freelancers, performing code reviews, quality checking work, explaining business requirements, following up on work performed, negotiating rates, negotiating deliverables, etc.. Q: How quickly can a project manager turn around an estimate, on average? A: If a client provides reasonably complete documentation for the project, a project manager familiar with the technologies being used should be able to provide an estimate for a small to mid-sized project in as few as 2-3 business days after having received all the documentation and having received answers from the client to any initial questions. Larger, more complex projects may take more time to evaluate and estimate. Some estimates come in less than eight hours, and others come in within a few days…  It just depends on the size of the project and the types of technologies being used. The more mainstream the technologies, the faster that supportive teams can respond, and the faster that an estimate can be prepared. Q: What is the hardest part about managing and following up on freelancers from around the world on a daily basis? A: Aside from dealing with time zone differences, the hardest part about managing and following up with freelancers is probably keeping track of all the moving parts of a project (parties involved, dependencies, expectations, status of tasks) – especially when multiple team members are involved. It requires thorough communication from all parties, and an ability on the part of the project manager to both (a) read between the lines to identify issues early based on freelancers’ communication or lack of communication and (b) convey complex project concepts succinctly and effectively. The Ziptask dashboard is a great way to keep everything in one place… The central project task list, milestones, and team chat sessions, etc. Q: What are some of the positive outcomes of using a project manager vs. not using one?  A: The biggest positive outcome of using a project manager should be that you, the client, achieve the desired result of your project and that your expectations are met. This is the definition of a successful project. I would also add the amount of money saved and time saved in dealing with freelancers and all of the troubles that it can cause. It’s the complete 'science of software development' - moving projects from the original vision of the customer, to the conceptualization by the project manager + support team, to prototype, to implementation, to release. - - - Yes, project managers have a challenging job, but with a sufficient set of patterns, guidelines, tools, and processes, the work they do is hedged from risk, and they are more like to deliver on target. Having the boost of Ziptask behind them, they approach the challenges of outsourcing facilitation with a sense of pride and determination.