The Technician Hat

Is Technician The Role You Fill In AN SSM?

The Technician or Technicians are generally not catalysts, they’re geeks. They’re the ones who think fiddling in Kumu is fun, who like learning a little code here & there, who have a sense of how data-bases work & have at least an inkling of what it means to talk about how data structured.

A pure Technician says ‘just give me the survey questions & options to set up, but don’t make me sit through the word-smithing’.

The Technician is the one who doesn’t get overwhelmed when the technology doesn’t behave, they just take it in stride and trouble-shoot their way to a solution. They’d rather do that than sit through debates about the ultimate purpose.

This doesn’t mean a Technician can’t wear other hats in an SSM project. It doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in SenseMaking either. But we find that the Vision-y & SenseMake-y types are often so much more focussed on people & process & meaning that they get a little overwhelmed & frustrated when dealing with the challenges of data & technology. That makes it crucial that you have at least one solid Technician involved in an SSM project.

If you’re a Technician, the Mapping section of this knowledge base are for you. You’ll need to have a sense of what the other hats are doing in the other phases, but everything the others will count on you for will be spelled out in detail in Mapping.