Know your limitations

From Softarch 97Things

Believing we are more capable than we are is all too easy a trap to fall into.  The role of an architect can easily convince that our abilities are far greater than they really are.  In truth you cannot underestimate yourself; our brains can only store a handful of pieces of information at one time and can only focus on the same thing for a few minutes.

By understanding and acknowledging this we start to realise that we can't hold an entire image of the problem in our head at once for a sustained period, that we will always miss something, that our brains trick us into believing we can see all the detail at one time.  Once we accept that we can move on to finding ways and techniques of tackling problems which take advantage of our limitations rather than deny them.

By accepting our own limitations it makes us realise the limitations of others to: that the people who will implement your architecture will also be limited in how much information they can deal with at one time.

Through undestranding our limitations we realize the impact of complexity and push ourselves toward simplicity.   By Peter Gillard-Moss

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