Architecture

Brick by Brick

Let’s say we are given a project to construct a tower 10 meters high, and all we have access to set is bricks. Management is expecting to see progress every hour.

Team A

Team A wants to please management and don’t really care what happens to the tower, so they decide on a straightforward plan. They will place each brick on top of the previous brick. Every hour they report progress to management which is pleased at their steady progress as each brick directly makes the tower a little taller.

However, as they are placing the last few bricks as the day begins to end, they begin to notice the tower swaying. Management starts to check-in more, where has the steady progress gone? The team doen’t have any more time to change course, they decide to keep going anyway. They keep placing more bricks and a substack of the bricks begin to sway and pass the center of mass of the bricks below. The tower crumbles, all the bricks land back on the ground, and they are on square one. Leadership steps in and asks Management what is happening. Management says the team has been making steady progress right up until the end, how could Management have forseen this?

The Team lacked any architecture to their tower. While early progress is easy, late progress becomes extremely difficult and can cause disaster.

Team B

Team B decides that 10 meters is very tall. They decide they need a super strong foundation. Their plan is to construct a massive base first and build up to the desired height, essentially a pyramid. They begin laying out the bricks in a square big enough so that as they stack future steps of the pyramid the slope of the steps never exceeds 45 degrees. Management steps in, it’s been multiple hours and they have not gotten much height at all. The team says this project requires huge foundation in order to meet the specs and progress will be slow