Consulting

As you can see from the book, presentations and blog entries, our experience speaks for itself. We offer a number of commercial services in addition to our training courses to help software teams build better software. Although we have experience in a number of technologies and development processes; our outlook is genuinely vendor, technology and process neutral. One size does not fit all, so you can expect our advice to be practical and pragmatic.

We're based in Europe and while we prefer to do consulting engagements collaboratively on-site, some of them can be done remotely. Here's a summary of the services that we offer. Please contact simon.brown at codingthearchitecture.com for more details or if you can't quite see what you're looking for.

1. Coaching and mentoring

We work with teams, in a much less hands-on capacity, to coach and mentor team members through their first software architecture/technical lead roles. This is a great follow-up for the Software Architecture for Developers training course, to help reinforce the ideas and techniques you'll learn about.

2. Hands-on software architecture

We supplement existing teams of software developers to define and deliver the architecture to solve your business problems. We take responsibility for ensuring that the chosen architecture is fit for purpose and that the project delivers a high quality, successful implementation of that architecture. Along the way we can help you with things like automated testing, continuous integration and deployment, load testing, operational handover, visualising progress with a Kanban board, etc, etc ... the usual things you'd associate with modern software development.

3. Software architecture reviews

Sometimes a quick sanity check is all you need. We can review and critique software designs to help you ensure that they are fit for purpose in the context of the functional requirements, non-functional requirements, constraints and principles. This can be done for new or existing systems and we look to simplify designs wherever possible.

4. Software architecture documentation

If you only write one document during the entire software development process, then make it a software architecture document. A good software architecture document should be lightweight and complementary to the code, describing what it doesn't. We can review software architecture documentation and help you write it.

5. Software project SOS

Despite best intentions, software projects can easily head offtrack for any number of reasons. Perhaps you've lost a key member of staff or maybe your progress just seems slower than it should be. We can help you review the current situation, identify the key problems and make some recommendations about how to move forward in the most effective way. Here's the sort of thing we might do. We've also assisted organisations in the due diligence process; reviewing the people, process and technology associated with the software development operation.

A final note

Although we write code on a daily basis, we're equally happy presenting to C-level executives and directors. Whatever it is we're doing, we always keep our audience in mind.