Stay open-minded

The longer you’re an architect, the less you tend to use words such as always or never. Why? Because you’ve learned from experience that oftentimes statements containing these words are proven false. Effective architects have open minds, and being open-minded requires you to assume that what you believe to be true isn’t necessarily; no matter how much your previous experience might tell you that it is. It’s impossible for you to know everything and if you accept that, then you know that others often have information that you don’t, so it’s in your best interest to listen to them and potentially learn something new in the process.

"Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth, or the only truth." --Charles A. Dana

Being open-minded also requires you to understand context, as the same statement could be true or false, depending on the context in which it’s used in. Further,

"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche

When asked a question, consultants are famous for answering “it depends.” This isn’t to be evasive, but rather to seek further clarification. Since consultants often work on many projects for different companies, they’ve come to learn that a given problem is rarely exactly the same; no matter how much two instances of a similar problem might have in common.

Effective architects know this too and approach each problem as though it’s unique, as certainly, some attributes of it will be each time. This is not to say that some attributes of a given problem aren’t the same each time, which is when the architect applies a particular design pattern or identifies a set of best practices or framework that is applicable. Effective architects use design patterns and frameworks as relevant however, rather than using them always or never.

I encourage you to read the short article How to Exercise an Open Mind from the eHow web site.