[Sigia-l] at what point does IA et al. become meaningless?

[Stew Dean]

At 15:43 17/08/2005, Samantha Starmer wrote:


>I actually find this 'IA vision' role the most interesting.  I have had 
>positions where my scope was core IA deliverables, but I find that I 
>prefer positions like my current job where I use my IA slant to shape the 
>strategy and long term thought leadership for an entire program rather 
>than just on individual projects.

Exactly what I find.  I recently saw a job listed for 'Business Analyst' 
and upon reading the job specification realised it's exactly the same role 
as a good IA - that is shaping the scope, taking on business needs, 
defining the business logic and writing use cases.

As an information architect you don't get much glory, but you do get to go 
in quietly into major companies and make bigger changes to the way they are 
perceived and communicate with their customers than a team of top shelf 
consultants are capable of :).




>I am fortunate that I can choose to hire an IA on contract if I need to 
>(and have the budget) for specific features or tasks, but I often do the 
>work myself as well.  I think that the benefit of all of this for the 
>company is that the primary business decision maker (myself) always has IA 
>needs in the forefront and can speak to them in any circumstance vs. the 
>limited pockets of time in a project a dedicated IA might otherwise be 
>involved.  This allows for the IA to continually be 'living' rather than 
>an artifact of particular projects.

Isn't it a case that there are two aspect here - the over view and the page 
level detail?  The detail take 90% of the time I find whilst the most 
important   stuff like overall strategy and main user journeys takes 10% of 
the time and is the real fun bit.  I personally can't let go of that 10% 
either.

Cheers

Stew Dean