10.8 Psychology of Ownership

"To strive for excellence is admirable. To strive for perfection is a character defect."

-Tony O'Brien

With individuals and groups, a very important concept is ownership. This type of psychological warfare takes advantage of the "not invented here" syndrome. Ownership can take a long time to develop but it is a very important concept for the architect to foster. Unfortunately, ownership can be much more easily eliminated than developed.

Ownership can be quickly lost if there is one "know-it-all" person who overrules and makes all decisions on a design or project. To some naysayers, this is the definition of the architect's role. To avoid this perception, the architect cannot be a micromanager. The architect must focus on architecturally significant questions and delegate engineering design questions to the responsible developers. In this way, individual developers acquire and control ownership of their own design space. Interfering with their design decisions, without an overwhelming reason, can be deadly to a project because it destroys ownership. Ensuring that the designers are provided adequate direction at the outset of every design effort usually lessens the need for intervention and provides better justification when it is needed because established design constraints are not adhered to.

It is good to know how to give someone else an idea. This is the key to ownership on the personal level. On most projects there is a "customer," someone who literally owns the project from a financial or responsibility perspective. Many customers are quite insistent that their ideas always take precedence, even if they are not qualified on the technical subject matter. Anyone else's "bright idea" can be either accepted or discarded, based on their whim or fancy. Architects need to be sensitive to this phenomenon. There are many arguments that the software architect can't win, no matter how right the architect is, because he or she doesn't "own" the project. Quality costs, and the person who is spending the money, wins.

Architects must learn to let go of certain cherished ideas, if the real project owner can't be won over. This situation seems to arise most frequently when there is a direct family relationship between the real project owner and a team member. Many good ideas will get overruled because the family member disagrees-whether or not he or she is really qualified to do so. This is a good example of "life is not fair." And it is something that each team member must accept, if he or she is to stay on the project.

Ownership is best fostered in a relationship of trust among the team members and the architect. There must be a division of design responsibilities if there is to be both ownership and quality design. The architect is responsible for architecturally significant decisions. The other team members each have assigned responsibilities. If everyone contributes, and is told how important his or her contributions are, there is the proper environment for establishing a sense of ownership. Ownership requires respect for all team members, no matter how large-scale or narrowly focused their responsibilities are.

In the psychological warfare over ownership, the desired outcome is long-term peace, with mutual respect and trust. For the architect, a powerful weapon in this battle for peace is showing concern for team members and their ideas. Some might call it affection or love. People won't listen if they think they are not appreciated. Psychologically, what people want most is "to know that they matter," that others think their ideas are important and worth considering, that those team members who are in charge think their contributions are essential to the effort. This feeling of mutual respect should be fostered at every opportunity. Showing respect for team members often results in reciprocal feelings for the architect. These concepts can also be applied to our own daily lives.

Some architects do rule by ego. They do their best to dishonor and discredit other people's ideas through political techniques and/or meeting confrontations. And they can be very successful, professionally, for a while. However, many discontented persons, crushed by the overwhelming ego of these architects, can be found in the wake of such people. This fosters feelings of resentment, which are long-lived, well beyond project completion. No one likes working with people like this, although they have had plenty of experiences with such people. Certainly, the person who rules by ego destroys ownership intentionally, which is counterproductive.