What Are the Implications of Being Irrelevant?
One of the anti-patterns most dangerous to the success of Java projects and architectures are Java dinosaurs - those who do not stay relevant. Just as dangerous as those who do not stay relevant are those who think they are relevant but are not. When we take these two types and put them in roles of leadership, they make decisions on architecture and technologies based on a non-relevant knowledgebase. The problem with technical managers or architects who don't stay relevant is the essence of an ivory tower: they become disconnected from the innovation and motivation that drive change in the IT industry. In some situations where an architectural team does not exist, technical decisions become the responsibility of the technical managers and they become ivory towers of technology, holding back the evolution and progress of their development teams.

In some of these situations, relevant and motivated engineers identify new and possibly better innovations in technology and methodologies. These are presented to the technical managers or architects, but unfortunately without being current with the changes in IT, these leaders don't have the proper information to make an informed decision. The results of these interactions often turn motivated engineers into frustrated engineers whose skills and drives are not given proper respect or the opportunity to drive innovation in their groups. The problem is, as many of us know, it doesn't take long to lose relevance.

These engineers constantly have to decide whether staying loyal to their current companies and becoming less relevant is more important than going where their relevant skill set leads them. Technologies and methodologies change so often that we quickly lose the vision of our experiences and how to best leverage innovations in the marketplace to better drive our direct IT needs. Being relevant is not always about reading up on the latest technologies, but it's very important to understand the latest and greatest to understand trends in the industry and whether or not those trends are relevant to our business.

How Do We Stay Relevant?
Java dinosaurs need to understand that it's no longer just about IT adding value to the business; it's also about the business adding value to IT. The way the industry is moving is providing a new vision of where business can be agile enough to meet immediate needs and may require from IT, capabilities that IT may not be ready for. Business and its drive to be more agile and its ability to drive down operating costs directly impact how they will use IT and therefore change the way that IT operates. It's our job to harness the technologies that help drive IT to be agile enough to react to the needs of business in the time required. We do this by working together as a team and breaking down the barriers of outdated skill sets.

Where do we go from here and how do we keep driving our skills forward? There are so many industries that require continual education from accountants, doctors, and teachers, and yet IT does not have the same requirements. The unfortunate part is how many businesses put training on the backburner of their organization, especially since many organizations have great assets internally that can be used to educate and train other individuals. We must strive to use our resources internally to create a broader and stronger technical knowledge base. Each developer or architect should always be able to "validate his worth" by assessing his skills against the current market and against the vision and direction of his current organization. This is sometimes a difficult challenge because many engineers might feel that they are underpaid for the value they provide their IT organization. Every IT person should be able to take stock of their skill set and validate that their skills match with what they are being paid to do. IT is an ever-changing and ever-evolving industry as we know and the day we feel we have reached our peak should be the day that we retire.