[Sigia-l] The Need for a Definition of I/A - real world example (was "first principles")

[Doug Howell (IT)]

Richard Dalton wrote:

<q>In my organization we have a strong need to bring clarity to lots of 
people's jobs [...] With a clearer definition of the roles and responsibilities 
(based on sound understanding of the discipline) I think things could be 
so much better. [...] i've suggested that for our 
organization Information Architecture is defined as "finding stuff" and 
I/D as "using stuff" .[...] Is anyone else in a similar position with their organization?</q>

I recently had to rewrite my job description for the second time in less than three years. The main purpose for this rewrite was to explain why two people who are Information Architects might do different jobs or have different specialties. Our other IA started in a new position (after me) and wrote her job description as a User Experience Architect. For whatever reason, HR ended up changing her title to Information Architect. I'm on the "structure" side of things, and she is on the "usability" side. Recently there was some confusion as to whether I should be able to substitute for her or help her when she was overloaded, since our title was the same. In our case, I could do it, but that would not necessarily be the case. It is obviously a wide enough discipline to include more than one specialty. We have many Programmers, but there are several specialties operating within that title (UI, J2EE, Cobol, etc.). No one seems to have a problem with that, but, probably since we have a new, unfamiliar title, it seems that we have to deal with misunderstandings more often than they do.

Doug Howell
Information Architect
Borders Group Inc.