During projects IT and construction project are often compared with each other. Even job description as 'architect' are directly take from construction. How realistic is this comparison?
Eleven IT consultant from Everest participated in charity work for the Internationale Bouworder (Internation Construction order) and took the test.
It is not straight forward that a group of Dutch IT consultants renovate a gym for a primary school in Belgium. Because an ex member of the board had made some money disappear, the school felt obliged to call in help from the Internationale Bouworde and ask for charity workers. Very often these charity workers are students who are willing to sacrifice their holidays for a good cause. However, through the Internationale Bouworde Everest was looking for an activity to work on some team building.
The first analogy between automation and construction is tough. Construction is relatively hard physical work, requires new skills from an IT person, and a back is not available. However, some parallels can be drawn. In both IT and construction projects you need to integrate components with existing structures, it should be possible to adjust in time, and soft skills are crucial.
In an IT environment one regularly comes across legacy systems. Often these work just fine, but new projects need to twist and turn in order for them to unite and connect. The same can be said for construction projects. "We assumed we just needed to attach a few benches for little kids to the wall" Frank Jareš states. “Quickly we realised that the wall was falling apart and thus not stable enough. We had to reconsider and redesign the entire construction before we could attach the benches."
A building project is not quickly associated with iterative development methods, such as Scrum in the IT. A blueprint of a building makes an IT person think about the waterfall model. Yet, Scrum is very applicable in a construction project. Rianne Stotteler clarifies: "Luckily we were able to adjust course quickly. By using Scrum methodologies we could show the school teachers tangible results every day and adjust our planning to their feedback. We could never have incorporated these things in our project design."
That a project needs to be well managed is stating the obvious. Just like in IT projects, the project leader should not keep be involved with the actual work. He/she should manage customer expectations. An open mind helps for a good preparation. Rogies Vos: "The strange thing was that, since a construction project was completely new to me, I could not make any presumptions during preparation. I could not give estimates from experience. Because of these we concentrated more on the process and focussed more on the details. This has surely paid off for the projectplan."
As a conclusion it can be stated that an IT person can, after a short skills training, make a could start in construction.
