Taking a break
As I'm transitioning between roles, I had some time to reflect on the journey to here. What has gone well and areas for improvement.
I had the opportunity to work for half a dozen electric utilities over the last 3 years. I can finally answer the question, how do other utilities do X. The ironic thing is the answers to the meaningful questions are still it depends. Thew difference now is that I can quote examples.
I underestimate the power of relationships. For most of my career, I have focused on delivery quality and continuous learning. One of my key take away from consulting is that I have improved the lives of others though work and my life has been improved by a large cast of characters. This network of support is stronger than contracts and its stronger than technologies.
Finally, much of what I've done over the last two years has required significant technical writing. I'm a little disappointed in the state of automation for architecture documents. I remember Rational SoDA and feverishly developing and updating templates. It looks like SoDA and even its successor Rational Publishing Engine have been discontinued. With Microsoft migrating to XML for Office formats, document automation should be even easier. Who does this well? What kind of work flows are other architects using for document automation? Anything in the OpenSource community or is this primarily a commercial problem?
Finally, I would like to do more blogging about technology and architecture. So hopefully more articles to come.
