Attack of the Architects

"Software architects" are often willing to destroy value in the name of generalization. As an example, I'm working with a group using VersionOne as a collaboration tool. VersionOne has a somewhat generic tagging mechanism called "Feature Group". For the most part, we use the "Feature Group" mechanism to track the "Capability Package" (i.e., a related set of high-level requirements from the product managers) from which a story was derived. But there are a (very) few teams that use the Feature Group mechanism in a different way. And so the software architects won't let us rename the field, because they prefer the general name, because they prefer generality over specificity.

The problem, of course, is that the term "Feature Group" means exactly nothing to anyone in the business. But at some undetermined point in the future, someone somewhere may wish to use "Feature Groups" for something else, at which time we'll be heroes! We kept it general, and abstract! And totally confusing for the business people in the organization who are actually trying to get something done! Yay! Hooray for architects!