SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: an IA going back to school.
Re: SIGIA-L: an IA going back to school... for an MBA?
From: Victor Lombardi (victorlombardi_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Sep 05 2001 - 18:27:51 EDT
I like your reasoning. I would just be worried about how you'd fare in the
marketplace after getting your MBA.
- People with those skills are definitely needed, but most companies don't
know they need people with that kind of training. Still this shouldn't be a
reason to not try.
- People who deal with production are often at a different level in the
organization than people who deal with business strategy and organization.
I wonder if any involvement in production generally results in lower
compensation than a traditional MBA would receive, making it harder to
recoup your education investment.
- You could make the same argument but instead of MBA insert
'Organizational Psychology' or 'Ethnography' and it could still work. Those
might be worth investigating.
At 02:06 PM 9/5/01 -0700, Brian Poel wrote:
>Since the downturn in the market (and the dissolution last spring of the
>dot-com where I was employed as the Information Architect) I have thought
>long and hard about going back to school.
>
>I looked at various Masters degree programs that seemed focused on IA
>related issues: like Carnegie Mellon's HCI degree and Interaction Design
>degree. I then looked at various schools' LIS programs, as well as HCI
>specializations within Cognitive Psychology or Computer Science departments.
>
>BUT NOW I'm looking at getting an MBA and I'm finally feeling at peace with
>my decision.
>Why is that? Well, among other things, some recent posts on the list have
>affirmed this decision for me.
>
>I'd be curious to hear whether anyone else would draw the same conclusion...
>
>----
>
> From Louis Rosenfeld's blog on the "future directions for IA":
>In Lou's last bullet point, "Rolling out enterprise-wide architectures", he
>talks about the need for IA's to be able to create "a coherent model for
>developing and maintaining architectures within a large enterprise" and to
>"start learning about ethnography and organizational behavior."
>
> From Paula Thornton's follow-up to Lou's post:
>Paula agreed that the "really large picture for the future of IA" revolves
>around individuals who can "put one blind eye toward the business (and it's
>vertical structures) to draw a horizontal path through daily operations.
>They need their own executive power to transcend the 'rules' and 'mores' of
>any individual group; and facilitate collaboration between groups."
>
> From Peter Merholz's post: "business transition to the web"
>Peter points out that IA's face the daunting task of making "the user
>experience across all interactions with the company consistent and fluid."
>In order to accomplish this, Peter said that "such an efforts require an
>appreciation of and an ability to manipulate organizational dynamics."
>
>---
>
>My conclusion: Take someone with
> + an Information Architect background (specifically an emphasis on software
>experience design and task analysis / interaction design (my background))
> + and an MBA (with an emphasis on business processes and managing change
>when implementing technology initiatives (my potential concentration))
> = someone who can ride point on the over-arcing strategy of high-impact
>software development projects for companies with complex business processes,
>and then steer the project through development so that it meets "user" needs
>(with the user being defined as the company whose processes the software is
>serving)
>
>Agree? Disagree? Think I'm smoking crack or turning to the dark side?
>I'd be especially interested in hearing from people who feel they've
>successfully mingled these two broad disciplines.
>
>
>.brian poel
> (title in constant flux)
> seattle, wa
> brianpoel_at_home.com
Victor Lombardi
http://www.noisebetweenstations.com/
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