Managing knowledge Half-Life

A constant challenge, for me personally, but also shared with other architect colleagues is how to stay relevant in a fast-changing environment for skills.

Designing and implementing solution architecture at present times requires a significant set of skills both in cloud-specific modern technologies, and also at the same time not to forget about the fundamentals of software design, architectural thinking, and organizational skills.

Here's my take on how to think a way through this.

Profile Types

The T-Shaped skill model is a common way in IT to describe a generalizing specialist (e.g. a Full Stack Developer or a Cross-Functional expert) that is very much sought for in Agile development practices. But there is a whole spectrum of shapes, that evolves based on the experience as shown in the figure below.

Starting from the left, we have the I-Shaped profile. This is the common starting point in the technical career path, in which we start to build out our initial core skills in a specific area of expertise.

IT Architecture requires growing in a wider array of dimensions, so it's necessary to focus on broadening the range of expertise.

But a really valuable architect should really strive to have deeper skills in multiple areas. This allows creating deeper synergies in the solution designs. At the same time, an increase in breadth of skills allows for an improved capability of connecting the dots (between different areas of expertise) and creating innovative and valuable solutions.

Manage Skill Portfolio

So, like in stock markets, we have to maintain a portfolio of skills and evolve this portfolio based on Opportunity and Strategy.  

Opportunity really depends on external factors, such as my current job, client projects, training opportunities, and availability of knowledge sources.

Strategy is based on our personal plans for the future and influences our decisions and the ability to create new opportunities, by stretching out of our comfort zone and trying different things.

Since we are all constrained for time, we have to manage our time budget allocated to knowledge improvement, I propose an additional way to evaluate choices in order to maximize the value of our knowledge.

Knowledge durability

So, how to prioritize? I would look at knowledge "durability".

I see this with an analogy to the Half-Life of radioactive materials. Each material has a different decay rate (lambda) constant that drives the different rates of decay through time. The greater the decay rate is, the quicker the knowledge is lost.

I would then prioritize long-lasting essential skills (e.g. Design Skills, Organization Skills) over narrowly focused areas (e.g. deep knowledge of a product version)

Some examples:

• Between these 2 books: 1 ) Eclipse Plugins vs 2) Enterprise Integration patterns I would choose the second one.
• Between these 2 training courses:  1) Architectural Thinking vs 2) <ProductX> specific training I would choose the first one.

But actually in the end we'll always have and need a mix of both knowledge types. So, I would focus my Strategy on long lasting essential skills, while developing more narrowly focused skills based on Opportunity.

Target profile shape for Cloud Architects

With time and experience, we might develop multiple areas of knowledge at different depths, and at the same time increasingly broaden the area of skills.

At the same time, we might also plan to stop investing on some areas to be effective in our chosen strategic direction. About this, beware of a possible strange profile shapes such as the one in this funny scenario.