[Spearchucker]

This framework is good. And like the other frameworks in other comments here, it's a good enough start in a small company, start up, or small department within a larger organisation.

A better framework might be cobbled together from various disciplines. For instance, "Understand". This part is huge. Well, bigger than those three questions the author lists.

"Understanding" begins by stepping back to look at the environment as a whole. Bound the situation. Assess organisational culture, the environment (immutable aspects of a transformation/process), the organisation's technology landscape (Active Directory?), regulatory requirements, competition, suppliers and customers.

There's also the social system (roles, norms, values), and the political landscape.

Then you define your objective. But before you can do that you need to know who your client is. Sure, in SV that's often easy. Outside that bubble not so much. Identify the client by asking some questions - whom do you need to satisfy? Who will judge the success of the project? Who will fail if the project fails? Who has authority for the project? Who pays for the project? Whom do you report to?

After all that you're ready to set an objective. Vision/scope stuff. Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-boxed. Cliche'd, but when a project goes wrong the specification is the only version of the truth a team has to fall back on.

Setting project objectives is much bigger than I can do justice to here. However once you have that you can start with the fun stuff. Design, build, deploy, repeat until done.

However while you're doing the fun stuff you still have to do the unfun stuff too - risk management, and stakeholder management. And it's stupefyingly incredible how many people think they know how to do these things but can't readily explain the difference between mitigation and contingency, exposure and impact, or why you have to be nice to the CIO for your project to succeed, even though the CTO and CEO are on your side.

I've written about all this stuff. https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=8ec91ced-b3a4-4b0...

[dominicr]

I think you've just nicely summarised why architects & project managers exist! There's a whole level of treacle to get through before coding can start, and that stays with the project throughout its lifespan.

The challenge I see most is getting the right level of understanding and design freedom to the developer level, where they know why they're being asked to do some work but without burdening them with extraneous detail or processes.

A lot of developers get annoyed at project managers and architects but they dislike project politics even more.

[Spearchucker]

"A lot of developers get annoyed at project managers and architects..."

If a PM or architect is annoying developers then there's a very big problem with the PM or architect. Like any profession you get good and bad apples. It's why anonymous feedback from people who manage you and whom you manage is so useful. Of course ego is prevalent the higher up the chain you go so this is something many organizations won't do.

[est]

IMHO the "understanding" part belongs to the "skills".

Social skills, communication skills is just as important as solving practical problems. This skill can be trained and often underrated.