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An enlightened architect has to be well versed in getting their point across. The critical ability to drive people and technology towards a common vision requires a knack for conveying intent and meaning. Often our years in corporate America or our mastery of technology robs us of our ability to speak coherently... filling our mouths with technobabble words like factories, engines, and services and corporate-speak like leverage, synergy and paradigm.
I'll never forget in high school, when a friend of mine proudly proclaimed they had started a new job. "I'm a fuel transference technician", they boasted. "What is that?", everyone asked with a puzzled expression. "I pump gas". Amazingly, our daily lives as architects and developers are riddled with similar technology colloquialisms.
On a recent project, a developer had spent some time building a new component which I felt was architecturally significant. I had requested that they spend extra time putting good comments in the code, since the component contained complex logic... and I felt it was extra important that the intent of the component be known to future maintenance programmers. What followed was a paragraph of buzzword filled jargon that was difficult for even ME to understand what the component did. Pulling in another developer who was not familiar with the component confirmed that the documentation didn't do an adequate job describing the intent. I asked to original developer to tell the review what the component's purpose was. They did a wonderful job summarizing the details of the component, to which I replied "That was awesome, I want you to remove the existing comment and have you replace it with the story you just told.... word for word".
Part of the trouble is that we are surrounded by examples of poor communication all of the time. Corporate memos, articles, and many textbooks overuse fluffy language. I've lost count of the business meetings I've attended whose single purpose was to 'wordsmith' a document. Wordsmithing is just a fancy way of saying you are cracking out the thesaurus and injecting industry buzzwords to give the document an extra air of credibility. Surely if a document is chock full of complex language it is more believable, right? wrong.
Corporate-speak and technobabble need to be fully eradicated from your language. Ok... even the best of us slip from time to time. The goal should be to stop judging your worth by the complexity of your ideas and statements. In fact, it is the reverse... the more simple your idea, the more simple your communication the more enlightened you truly are.
