So; it's been quiet around here. You might have noticed. Then again, perhaps not.
I've been busy you see, with work. Or something masquerading quite cleverly as work anyway.
I must report that I have a new-found respect for analysts, married to a bitter hatred of the activity itself. You see, for the last few weeks that’s what I've been doing: analysing. It has occurred to me though that it's not the analysis itself that is so distasteful, but the apparent futility of this particular exercise; the client whose system I am so thoroughly scrutinizing already knows what's wrong with their processes, and have reached their own conclusions, which are very much the same as the conclusions that I am reaching, or so I am discovering. They almost certainly know what I'm going to say, and I am more than certain that they're not going to follow my advice. So what's the point, I find myself asking (no doubt you do too, gentle reader).
Well, having been cloistered in the warm, enveloping womb of the development environment for years now, I've been largely sheltered, at least recently, from dealing with that most dastardly of villains: the client. Those demanding, indecisive, fickle, unfathomable, creatures, their pockets brimming with the coin we all so fervently desire. And so, having repaired my carefully constructed naiveté over time, I had quite forgotten about that cornerstone of modern business: customer relationship management. This is a deceptively benign term for the Machiavellian task which it actually represents.
It would seem that the end-product of my analysis is really just another pawn (perhaps a knight, if I’m fortunate) in a chess game the ends of which are beyond my reckoning. Unlike any normal chess game, there are many more than just two players, each with their own goals, schemes and ends in mind. And some of the players, who should be allies, are actually bitter and violent enemies, who nonetheless smile and nod at each other, maintaining the façade, playing the game. In fact my own band of happy-go-lucky warriors seems to be most at risk; we play different sides, gain small victories where we can, try to turn our enemies against each other, and fight desperately to ensure our own survival in a game for which I suspect we have only been told half the rules, and for which the penalty of joining the losing side is certainly something terrible. Like dismemberment, or boiling oil.
No doubt you’re all incredibly impressed by my insight into this complicated process and are all already feverishly typing me e-mails inviting me to join your management team, hoping that I’ll employ this newly realized knowledge of mine to make your company ridiculous amounts of money. But before you hit send I have a confession to make: knowing that the Dragon exists is not the same as knowing how to tame it. I must admit, that I am blissfully ignorant of the Bigger Picture. Blissful, because I have seen those people who have glimpsed the grand design. I’ve seen the bags under their eyes from lack of sleep; I’ve seen them chewing their nails, consumed by the enormity of it all. I’ve watched them sit dully in their plush management offices, no doubt silently contemplating the true cost of having traded their soul for the knowledge of Good and Evil.
And so here I sit, endeavouring to master the ManagerSpeak dialect just eloquently enough to convey the Solution in terms that make Business Sense; trying to transmute the sublime constructs my mind has conjured into existence into dull black-and-white words, strip them free of their art until only their skeletons remain, arranged into a haphazard sign that points the Way Forward, which inevitably must lead us to the Bottom Line.
And so I carefully look the other way or keep my head down, mindful not to look too hard or too long at the Big Picture, lest it drive me mad. I try not to dwell too much on the futility of it all, lest it rob me of my passion for the art. I rail against the inexorable disintegration of my mantle of innocence. I wonder how long I can hold out.