One of the great unsolvable problems in software development is how people seem to always use the same terms to mean very different things. I’m not just talking about using words that mean different things. I’m talking about everyone talking about the same project, from the same technical mindset, and not going anywhere.

This guys says that a lot of it has to do with timespan of the term. He says that the problem is that we use terms like “long-term” and “strategic” in our software architecture discussions. He encountered the same thing we have when he had to document an enterprise architecture plan. The architects were from all over, and had very different ideas about what “long-term”,”short-term”, “strategic” and “tactical” meant:

It turned out that they were disagreeing because they were all talking about different things. Some of them thought that the future state was 2 years out. Some thought it was 3 years out. A handful said 4-5.

I don’t know what he’s talking about when he says “work levels”, but this looks like an amazingly simple way to try and simplify these architecture discussions. How many times I have sat in endless meetings trying to come to agreement with the client on architecture. Using timeframes instead of simple terms would have made the underlying disagreements surface.

Whether or not they actually have something that is worth reading is another matter. I usually like their stuff, so maybe I’m just getting old.