Traditionally we have seen the separation of architecture governance and programme delivery, so there is a programme board and technical design authority (TDA). The latter’s role is to control and gate the architecture while the former is responsible for considering business priorities and delivery of the system. Recently I ended up with both responsibilities; that is of the role of architecture and delivery lead out of necessity and this ended up working well as I could balance the two and could take a more holistic view.

This led me to wonder why we do have this separation of what could be crudely termed body and mind in homerage to Descarte’s Cartesian Dualism. This is something that Raymond and Dennis Noble argued against in their recently published book ‘Understanding Living Systems’. Their view is that there is no separation of control as the DNA is the template but it is controlled as much by the cell as controlling the cell reproduction.

Maybe it is time that we look at bring these backing these two bodies back together and acknowledge that mind and body are not separate but integral as in nature.