People Need to be Part of the System Design

As the recent outage at Google demonstrates, including people in the design of a system is often overlooked in technology focused organizations. In that particular example, Google left the ability for a single user to take then entire system down by adding “/” to the blocked site list. Why would this ever need to happen?

More generally, IT organizations need to recognize the importance of people in our architectures. What good is a password if people will write it down? What good is a workflow if people are still printing and signing forms? What good is an ERP system if the numbers are still manipulated by hand?

Every project should include not only a technical understanding of what is being implemented, but also an understanding of the business processes and people that will operate in the system — both users and administrators.