A big thank you to everybody that braved the tube strike to come along to the Coding the Architecture session last night. We started the evening with about 6 people and ended with around 20, which was excellent. Thanks also to Skills Matter for hosting us and to Neil from Omni Resources for coming along to buy us all a beer afterwards.

For those of you that came along, we hope that you found it a useful session. For those that couldn't make it, I presented a short session about architecting tactical solutions before we broke into a group discussion, during which some really interesting points were raised.

• Your tactical solution might not be so tactical if you spot the following warning signs : "the system must be secure", "the system must be centrally deployed", "the system must be auditable", "we need pages/screens to administer the system", etc.
• The effort that goes into developing a tactical solution often outweighs the lifespan of the system (assuming that it really is limited, of course). A couple of examples cited were a 2 week build (1 person) with a 1 week lifespan and a 4 week build (4 people) with a projected 3 month lifespan.
• Your technology choices and decision on how much quality assurance to perform (e.g. automated unit testing, coding standards, etc) probably reflects your thoughts on whether *you* will be the one that has to support the system and come back to sort out problems in the future.

The entire discussion was very good, but those are the points that stick out in my mind. At the start of the session, I said that we're looking for other people to suggest topics, present and lead sessions. We're not necessarily looking for polished PowerPoint presentations or expert speakers, but we are looking for people that are willing to share their software architecture experiences. Here is our list of potential future topics, but please do get in touch if you have your own ideas and/or want to present. Case studies of software projects from an architecture perspective would also be interesting.

• Making the jump from developer to software architect.
• Coding and the role of a software architect.
• What do you capture in your software architecture document?
• Dealing with non-functional requirements.
• Real-world experiences with SOA.
• Agile architecture : How much is just enough?
• Hiring software architects.

Again, thanks for coming along. You can download the slides from here and please feel free to use the Google Group if you want to continue the discussions from last night. We hope to see you next month.

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Posted by Simon Brown on 05 September 2007 20:01:00 BST #