[Sigia-l] Re: What makes an IA good at what he or she does?

[Polansky, Adam]

GAWD I wish I had a nickel for every time someone pointed to a deliverable as the sum total of what an IA brings to the table!  

Of course anytime some snark expects me to justify my existance and value in two sentances or less, I'm prone to take the eloquent approach and say " bite me". (Aaah... the things we say and the things we'd like to say!)

There are several points in this thread with which I agree.

Nurture vs Nature:
I think it's partly in the "wiring".  There are some intrinsic propensities that lend themselves to being a good IA.  I don't know how you could answer the question; what makes me better (or worse) than another professional.  Things being relative, your experience may be suited to a particular environment or verticle that I might not be able to really get a handle on.

"I could do that!":
Another point to consider, is that if someone looked at your deliverables and decided (conveniently, after the fact) that they were simple, that might mean that you did a great job.  Tiger Woods makes it look simple but, if youve ever gone through a box of golf balls before the club-house turn, you know otherwise. And, while you might know how to operate a camera, it doesn't make you a photographer. [insert your favorite analogy here]

Liason:
To some of the points posted in this thread, I think another baseline attribute to being a "good" IA has to do with your abilities as a liason.  How well do you communicate between factions?  Do your deliverables do that?  

Confidence:
I've been flippant in the past about how an IA gets experience by saying "Wait 'til you're over a certain age and never keep a job longer than two years."  The truth is, no matter what you do, general experience gives you confidence.  Not a bad trait to have when you're in the spotlight, eating up project hours perceived by some as better spent on development and an obstacle to getting on with the programming.

"Aye, there's there's the rub"
Once again we're back to one of our original charters: Being able to explain to our moms what we do for a living. 

For my experience, patience, a willingness to teach and a firm belief in evolution has had the biggest impact on the perception of the role.  "Once you go IA you (almost) never go back."  

Success for us sometimes comes by understanding what "didn't" happen.  If nothing (or less than usual) goes wrong, who notices?  Assuming you get the opportunity to contribute the best way you can to a project, you get to expose people to a process that brings great care and scrutiny to the early stages when the cost of change is minimal and you can actually shorten development time.  You can show developers that umpteen revision cycles isn't "just part of the landscape".  In the end, they may not even know how you impacted the success of the project but they'll know you did.  In the real world, it seldom goes that rosy.  But it can and it sometimes it does.



Adam Polansky
Information Architect  ::  Customer Experience
Travelocity.com
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