I was asked an interesting question on Linked In this week that got me thinking about what steps/roles do different areas of a business play in building solutions.
Each part below has a different but important part to play in the problem-solving process. Now there are exceptions to this, but I have found this to be very successful.
- The business, for the most part, comes up with, defines, and owns the problems to solve. This makes sure that what we are building is tied to the outcomes of the business and helps make sure that we are providing value back to the overall organization. This also means that the business does not come up with or own the end solution.
- Then a person or team of people (Solution Architect, Enterprise architect, ETC…) sends the problem to the right tech team to solve. This is important because every tech team (Data Science, ML, development, analytics, ETC) will pound a square peg into a round hole. If you send a problem straight to the data science team, they will solve the problem with a model even though the best solution might be a simple web app and vice versa.
- The last step is the tech team should and will solve the problem using their superpowers. They decide on and own the solution. This is where all the hard work happens to make sure the problem is solved well and correctly.
This framework has a lot of different ways it can be implemented in an organization but no matter how you are pushing work through, it should at least have these three starting steps.
