“The Bridge”

This bridge will only take you halfway there
To those mysterious lands you long to see :
Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fairs
And moonlit woods where unicorns run free
So come and walk awhile with me and share
The twisting trails and wondrous worlds I’ve known.
But this bridge will only take you halfway there –
The last few steps you’ll have to take alone.

- Shel Silverstein

That poem is pretty much committed to memory for me right now as I regularly read “A Light in the Attic” to my girls before they go to bed, and we always end with a reading of that poem.  Today, however, it carried a new meaning as I was working with one of our project teams at work.  We were analyzing a customer’s business process and I started to educate them on some UML and software design elements for breaking down the business process into components.  I introduced concepts such as actors, componentizing of classes such as customers, sales person, and the properties or metadata that applied to them.  Really I was trying to get them to look across the mass of Excel spreadsheets that the business was currently using to run its internal operations and break it down into class diagrams, activities, state changes, and use cases.

There are a few things that seemed to linger with me after the initial exercise and meeting in which I was trying to communicate these concepts I had learned through years of IT and development projects.

1.     Many of these concepts were foreign to the team (and sometimes I felt like I was speaking Greek to them.. although it was probably just “Geek”)

2.     None of the team members had a technology background or education (mostly MBA’s and finance backgrounds)

3.     The intern of the group related to the concepts faster than the other team members

4.     Once they “got” it they immediately understood the benefit of the exercise I was taking them through

So here I sit reflecting on the process and scratching my head as to why more disciplines are not getting exposure to some of these concepts that us technology oriented people have lived and breathed for years.  I read every day on Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, aligning technology to the business, how technology can create new business opportunities, but the very core methodologies that make these efforts successful are not even being mentioned to the millennial generation.  It doesn’t matter if we are talking cloud computing, Web 2.0, social media, etc. successful business process modeling techniques are still very important skills to learn in the business world.  Honestly I believe they are even MORE important in this day and age of technology than they were when I first learned them.  With information being stored across systems and network infrastructures keeping with my core tenets of a successful IT program becomes harder every day.

Over the years I have found that my “career upbringing” has armed me with some very powerful skills as I moved into the business leadership roles I’ve been in as of late.  System design, object oriented programming, process modeling, focusing on core capabilities, thinking outside of the box are all skills I’ve learned as a technology professional.  The evolution or revolution as I call it, has been that these methodologies and teachings have great application to the business world.  I learned about continuous process improvement from CMMI, process modeling through development and UML concepts, problem solving and communication through system administration and help desk, and collaboration and “networks” in my hardcore “router head” days.  All of these concepts I apply and probably more importantly teach regularly in my current leadership role in the organization.

So technology professionals your training and background has more application than designing proper software systems and architectures, and business people your technology professional has more to offer in these times than making sure the email server is running.  But no matter which “role” you play in an organization for people and a team to grow around you and see you as a leader you need to build the bridge for people to be able to take those last few steps.