Big Picture Thinking – The Need for A Design

Today I am sat in an office where the big picture of the design was completely missed.

This building is a long thin building. Along the long sides are individual offices, leaving the dark middle for these not entitled to such luxury.

The heating for the building also runs along the long side (in the offices). Because the heating was designed to heat the whole space the individual office get very hot from the heating. The space in the middle stays cold because it has no heating.

The individual offices have air conditioning (as well as heating) because they get too hot.

On many days of the year the heated air is simply being pumped straight out of the air conditioning leaving the poor individuals who aren’t in an office with no heating and feeling rather cold.

I have been involved in many IT projects where this situation has also arisen. A programme of work is created to achieve a major goal. The major goal is split down into a set of projects with individual objectives. The individual objectives are tracked and managed assuming it will result in the major goal. All to often the result is a freak that looks ridiculous.