I told you so

In technical architecture the I told you so scenario is a situation which occurs when the technical architect or some other specialist is forced into a position of having to remind a decision maker that a (usually unwanted) scenario has occurred because his original advice was ignored. Usually the timeline for this follows as such:

Related Topics:
Technical architecture - Technical architect

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• The business makes a request for a given alteration or extension for an existing system to accommodate a customer or internal request which has been poorly analysed,
• The specialist (a technical architect or design authority for example) advises the business against such an alteration on the basis of it bringing unnecessary risk into the system,
• The business ignores the advice and decides to go forward with the change,
• Some time after the system collapses due to the nature of the change,
• The specialist is asked to fix the system, to which it responds with a resounding I told you so.

There are no winners in the I told you so scenario, only losers - the business loses (because it ends up in a situation where loss of revenue or customer confidence is likely) and so does the specialist (because it now has to fix what is likely to be un-fixable). This Anti-pattern is closely related to management by numbers.

Related Topics:
Anti-pattern - Management by numbers

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The I told you so is an example of an Anti-pattern.

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