Coding the Architecture - conference tag

Speaking at the Software Architect 2010 conference

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:12:00 GMT

Just a quick post to say that I'm speaking at the Software Architect 2010 conference in London next month. I'm running a pre-conference workshop, a post-conference workshop and two technical breakout sessions as follows.

Software Architecture in a Day (pre-conference workshop)

This one-day workshop is an interactive introduction to software architecture and what it means to be a software architect. It's aimed at software developers who are looking towards their first software architect role, developers who want to become more architecturally aware and software architects that are new to the role. We'll be asking and answering the following questions:

What is software architecture?

What is the role of a software architect?

How do you define software architecture?

How do you share software architecture?

How do you deliver software architecture?

Where do you start?

One of the hardest things about software development is being asked to come up with a design when all you're given is a set of requirements and a blank sheet of paper. Many software teams will dive straight into the code and while this can initially be very productive, the slippery slope of constant refactoring is awaiting those teams that haven't quite found a design that works. Often, a little forethought is all that's needed to get the development process heading in the right direction. So where do you start?

How do you design for non-functional requirements?

You may have heard people talking about "non-functional requirements", mentioning things like performance, scalability, availability, security, flexibility and so on. What do you do if you're asked to design software that exhibits these qualities and furthermore, how do you do it in a pragmatic way? Come along to find out about some of the approaches that you can adopt and some of the trade-offs you'll need to make.

Boxes & Lines (post-conference workshop)

Talking about software architecture will get you so far, but in reality it's all about experience and that's exactly what this workshop offers. Given a set of functional requirements, you'll be asked to identify the other architectural drivers before doing some design, choosing some technologies and drawing some boxes and lines. Join us if you want to know where to start with designing software and how to go about the software architecture definition process in a lightweight, structured and pragmatic way.

Feel free to stop me and say hello if you're at the conference; should be a great event.

Upcoming events

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:49:31 GMT

Just a short post to provide a rundown of the events that we'll be speaking at over the next couple of weeks.

	Kevin and I are presenting a one-day tutorial at QCon London 2010 called Software Architecture for Developers, which covers the majority of the content from our two-day training course without the practical case-study exercises. Following this, Kevin is presenting a session for the "Cool Stuff with Java" track about OSGi and industrial-strength Swing.
	I'm running our two-day training course at Skills Matter in London and, as I mentioned at the start of the year, this has been enhanced to include more content about the actual process of architecture, with a focus on coming up with a high-level software design in a few hours rather than a few weeks. You can preview the slides and there are a few places remaining if you want to come along.
	I'm running a session at the IASA UK Chapter that will look at where to start with designing a software system from a blank sheet of paper. The focus here is on pragmatic software design without the need for lots of process or expensive modelling tools.
	Finally, I'm running two sessions at DevWeek 2010; one called "Improving quality with an automated build process" (it has a .NET focus) and one called "A developer’s guide to load testing" that covers the basics for evaluating architectures where performance and/or scalability is important.

It's going to be a busy couple of weeks, but I'm planning on spending some time in the audience at both QCon and DevWeek. If you want to meet or catch-up, feel free to send me an e-mail or a message via Twitter.

Speaking at DevWeek 2010

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:09:54 GMT

A quick note to say that I'll be presenting two talks at DevWeek 2010, which is taking place at the Barbican in London next year. Both talks have an underlying theme of improving software quality...

1. Improving quality with an automated build process

This session will look at the development processes in use for an ASP.NET application where quality and consistency have a direct effect on the reputation of the organisation. We'll look at: Subversion and our use of code branches to manage release complexity; Visual Studio and the add-ins we use on a daily basis; NUnit and our strategies for achieving over 90% code coverage through a combination of automated unit, integration and load testing; NAnt and how it allows us to build, test and release code from any of our development branches in an automated and repeatable way; CruiseControl.NET and how it performs continuous integration and testing on all of our development branches.

2. A developer's guide to load testing

Load testing is an often forgotten and seemingly difficult task that many people shy away from doing. It doesn't have to be this way though, with a basic level of load testing often enough to give you confidence that you've satisfied your performance and scalability requirements. This session will look at load testing a website from a developer's perspective. We'll look at the difference between load testing, stress testing and soak testing along with a hands-on demonstration of an open source load testing tool that you can use to get started. If you're building websites in Java, .NET, PHP or indeed any other programming language, this session will show you how easy it is to load test your website.

The latter is a much extended version of the load testing session I presented at Skills Matter earlier this year, where we'll actually go through creating a full load test script with Apache JMeter as well as looking at some of the problems associated with measuring latency when load testing. As always, DevWeek looks to be an excellent conference.

Also speaking at Software Architect 2009

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:22:22 GMT

As Simon's already indicated, we'll be presenting at Software Architect 2009 in London.

We'll be running the CTA one-day workshop and Simon will be presenting two sessions on some of the skills typically required of software architects.

I'll be presenting a session on my day (and the occasional evening and night) job, working on a financial trading application. The focus will be on the client-side architecture of the desktop application, showing a few examples of how client and server development have similar concerns and solutions, but also where they are different and benefit from different techniques.

We've covered most of these concerns in various posts on this site, from development methodology to service-oriented designs and approaches to logging. With the return of rich applications (albeit "zero install" and/or running in a browser, plugin or mobile device) it's worth considering which design decisions are based on an understanding of this domain or simply inherited from lessons learned working server-side.

The schedule for SA2009 is looking good, so hopefully we'll be able to provide an overview of the discussions and presentations from this year's conference.

Speaking at Software Architect 2009

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:25:12 GMT

I'm pleased to announce that I'm presenting a number of sessions at Software Architect 2009, which takes place at the end of September in London. Here are the details of the sessions I'm presenting and we'll try to organise a CTA user group to coincide with the event. Kevin is also presenting, but I'll let him tell you about that. :-)

First of all, following its continued success, we're again running our 1-day software architecture workshop (which forms the basis of our longer training course). This is a pre-conference workshop and a great way to start the conference for anybody new or unfamiliar with software architecture and the role it has in building better software.

From Developer to Architect

This session is an interactive introduction to software architecture and what it means to be a software architect. It's aimed at software developers who are looking towards their first software architect role, as well as architects that are new to the role. You will gain:

An understanding of what it means to be a software architect, and the role's responsibilities.

An understanding of the trade-offs connected with architectural decisions.

Some experience of what it feels like to be an architect, including gathering non-functional requirements, determining the drivers for architecture, and defining an architecture.

An understanding that, as a software architect, it's okay to do some coding.

Combining presentation, group discussion and group working, throughout the day you'll be solidifying everything you learn by defining the architecture for a small software system. The overall goal is that you can take the experience gained here and apply it to your own projects. No architecture experience required, but software development experience is assumed.

Next up is a session that will look at some of the real-world skills that are needed by software architects today. This takes our view of the role of a software architect and fleshes out the technology aspects of it.

Broadening the T

A breadth of experience is key for successful software architects, but how do you get this and what should you know? In this technical session we'll look at the things every software architect should know, drilling down into the following topics:

Architecture and design patterns

Technologies, frameworks and tools

Designing for and testing non-functional requirements

All of this will done in the context of the Microsoft .NET and Java technology stacks, so you'll get some concrete guidance on what knowledge will help you in your role as a successful software architect.

Finally is a session that expands on Kevin's Sharing Architectures presentation to look at what should be included in an architecture definition. Real-world examples will be presented here to provide some concrete examples.

Documenting your software architecture - why and how?

A description of your software architecture is essential for any project of any size, explaining the rationale behind the design decisions and how the software will work in the real world. Such descriptions should include an explanation of the software structure, the architectural principles adopted, the constraints in force, the platforms on which the system is deployed and an explicit justification of how the architecture satisfies the requirements. A good software architecture document should describe what the code itself doesn't. This session will tell you how to do this.

Speaking at DevWeek 2009

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:00:00 GMT

Although the final schedule has been published for a few weeks now, I'm pleased to announce that Kevin and I are presenting a number of sessions at DevWeek 2009, which takes place at the end of March in London. Here are the details of the sessions and we'll try to organise a CTA user group to coincide with the event.

1. Pitfalls for new software architects

It's a well-known fact that we learn by making mistakes, but why not get a head-start and learn from other people's! The software architecture role involves a depth of technology skills along with a breadth of many other things, including soft skills. Those of us that have driven down Architect Boulevard will know that it's a potted ride and in this session we'll tell you exactly where those pitfalls are. Packed full of real-world advice and quotes from others new to the role, this session will give new and aspiring software architects some solid advice for taking their roles forward.

2. Flex, Silverlight or JavaFX - which should you choose?

Rich Internet Applications are a hot topic at the moment; with Adobe, Microsoft and Sun vying for your attention in a post-AJAX world. But which should you choose? In this session, we'll look at three major RIA platforms - Flex, Silverlight and JavaFX. A common example will be used to demonstrate each of the platforms, additionally acting as a baseline for an unbiased comparison of the code, development paradigm, flexibility, ease of use and so on. Come along and let the RIA debate begin!

3. An introduction to the Java platform for .NET developers

This session presents an introduction to the Java platform and is aimed at anybody with .NET experience. But wait a minute, this is 2009! Why do this now? More and more enterprise projects are turning away from a single technology stack solution and becoming more heterogeneous in nature. If we as technologists are to survive in this ever-changing industry, we need to put any dogma to one side and expand our horizons. We need to start evaluating technologies on their merits rather than simply writing them off through vendor preferences in order that we can provide real business benefit to the stakeholders. As .NET developers, this is your opportunity to get a jump-start into the world of the Java platform, where we'll be taking a look at a number of different APIs, libraries and frameworks, drawing parallels to the .NET framework where applicable.

4. From Developer to Architect

This session is an interactive introduction to software architecture and what it means to be a software architect. It's aimed at software developers who are looking towards their first software architect role, as well as architects that are new to the role. You will gain:

An understanding of what it means to be a software architect, and the role's responsibilities.
An understanding of the trade-offs connected with architectural decisions.
Some experience of what it feels like to be an architect, including gathering non-functional requirements, determining the drivers for architecture, and defining an architecture.
An understanding that, as a software architect, it's okay to do some coding.

Combining presentation, group discussion and group working, throughout the day you'll be solidifying everything you learn by defining the architecture for a small software system. The overall goal is that you can take the experience gained here and apply it to your own projects. No architecture experience required, but software development experience is assumed.

Software Architect 2008

Wed, 07 May 2008 20:13:13 GMT

Just a short note to plug a handful of sessions that Kevin and I are presenting at the upcoming Software Architect 2008 conference, 3rd-5th June, London.

1. Coding the Architecture : From Developer to Architect

The first is a re-run of our popular all-day workshop/tutorial, which is an introduction to software architecture.

This session is an interactive introduction to software architecture and what it means to be a software architect. It's aimed at software developers who are looking towards their first software architect role, as well as architects that are new to the role. By attending this session you will gain:

An understanding of what it means to be a software architect, and the responsibilities associated with the role.

An understanding of the trade-offs that are made when making architectural decisions.

Some experience of what it feels like to be an architect on a bespoke software development project; including gathering non-functional requirements, determining the drivers for architecture, and defining an architecture.

An understanding that, as a software architect, it's okay to do some coding.

The session is interactive; with a combination of presentation, group discussion and group working. Throughout the day you'll be solidifying everything you learn by defining the architecture for a small software system. The overall goal is that you can take the experience gained here and apply it to your own projects.

Read more...

2. Why Software Projects Fail

The next session takes a look at why software projects fail, and how software architects can prevent this from happening.

The industry has a love/hate relationship with the Software Architect role, with many organisations dismissing it because of their negative experiences of architects that dictate from ivory towers and aren't engaged with the actual task of building working software. This reputation is damaging the IT industry and inhibiting project success. Things need to change. This session looks at some of the reasons why software projects fail, and presents the view that a good, hands-on software architect can be invaluable in addressing these issues and driving the project to a successful conclusion. Software architects are here to help, not to hinder.

Read more...

3. Sharing Architectures

And the last session we're presenting is about *sharing* architectures (as opposed to just writing them down in a document).

The transition from architectural vision to production code is not always an easy one. Of course we plan for a certain amount of change and accept that some decisions will, on occasion, be wrong. However, without effective communication of the architecture and timely feedback mechanisms, can we really expect to see software that we recognise? Whether we're up to our elbows in an agile team or riding a barrel down a waterfall project, our choice of what we define and how we convey it can have an enormous bearing on how the architecture is reflected in the software. This session takes a look at some techniques for sharing the architecture and not just publishing it.

Read more...

Should be a really good conference ... if you're coming along, please do stop us and say hello. :-)