Good design is not an accident...

Well… we have finished hard part of shifting the company and may start to work tomorrow or day after tomorrow. New place new beginning right: )

Anyway this post is not abt that but a problem I'm facing these days.

I know it is how important to share your ideas, designs etc... between your colleagues right. If you are an associate architect you have to have senior architect to associate with no.... But what happens if there is no one? And all others are struggling like you. That would make you feel really really bad. Especially if you have just thrown in to architecture or maturing in to it and have got 3+ years of experience in software development and have a huge enterprise application to design. If you wanna be a good architect I believe you have to work with senior architects. They will guide you, correct you, rescue you, teach you and specially will share their experience with you. I believe that’s makes a real architect.

Anyway I have my senior colleagues in to the rescue although they haven’t got huge experience with architecture. But believe me they are best and also thriving like me so we together as a team could do sth definitely good.

This is a nice post from Nick Malic although it's not talking abt peoples who are maturing in to architect.
http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik/archive/2006/03/10/549189.aspx

I couldnt help just posting the url only. So here is the artcle itself. :)

One potential often missed in a large IT organization is the potential for us to lift up another person's design skills. Perhaps we are competitive, or perhaps sometimes, we figure that "it's all the same anyway," but a lot of IT project designers don't want to show their designs to other folks.

But if I never look at your designs, how will I improve? And if you never allow me to offer feedback to your design, how will you improve?

Artists get this right. So do craftsmen. Emphasis is placed on being recognized. For that to happen, your design has to be in an understandable media, and has to be on display. Not on a shelf where someone COULD go look at it if they want to, but on DISPLAY, where other folks have no choice but to see it.

And then, not just to see it, but to compare, critique, appreciate, and exemplify. There need to be design competitions, and the winning of a design competition should mean something tangible, like a greater chance of moving up or a bigger bonus or even public praise and acclaim.
Smaller companies that don't have so many IT workers may not be able to participate, but they should be able to partake of the results. Acclaim should extend beyond the walls.
We do have "showcase" apps in Microsoft IT, but only where it will sell a product or illustrate how to solve a problem with MS tools. Not so much as a mandatory mechanism to bring out the best in IT design.

Otherwise, good design happens when a good designer accidentally has a good day or is accidentally assigned to a project that they would be good at. I mean "accidentally" because something is either an expression of the system that produces it, or it is an accident of the combination of skilled people and a project that suits them.

Making good design a part of the system, reinforcing it, rewarding it, and heaping public praise and acclaim on those who practice it will go a long way towards making excellence in design a normal part of life.