Coding the Architecture - training tag

Rescheduled London events at Skills Matter

Wed, 05 May 2010 19:13:00 GMT

Following last months disruption from the volcanic ash cloud, I'm pleased to say that our training course and my "In the brain" session at Skills Matter in London have been rescheduled. Software Architecture for Developers is now running on the 17th and 18th of May, while the free "In the brain" session entitled Where do you start? is taking place on the 17th of May at 6:30pm. I'm catching the ferry rather than the aeroplane so I hope to see you there!

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.

December 2009 training summary

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:28:54 GMT

I've had a few people ask me for a write-up of the recent training course, so I thought I'd put something together. This was the first time I've run the course with the new content and structure in place and the feedback was excellent. In the past, I think I'd always assumed that people had their own way of designing software so we never explicitly covered this in any detail other than offering guidance during the main case study exercise. The course now includes much more content and guidelines for designing software although it doesn't go so far as to define a complete end-to-end process. Jason Gorman has a good blog entry called Value Is Not The Opposite Of Waste: Why I Don't Buy Into Process Improvement that talks about how simply putting a process in place doesn't necessarily make things better. And I agree. I don't particularly want to preach a "software architecture process", but I do want to highlight the principles of good software design and how to successfully come up with a software architecture. I'd rather ensure people have the correct knowledge and understanding that can then be used and adapted to fit in with *their* way of working. Having said that, I still think that I'd like to put slightly more guidance around some techniques that can be used to get to the big picture and beyond. I have some ideas on this and will write them up after the Christmas break.

The reorganisation of the course content into the same five areas as the website has also worked really well and makes for a much more logical flow from introducing architecture and the software architecture role through to defining, sharing (e.g. documenting) and delivering/evaluating software architecture. I had a really great time in London running the course at the new Skills Matter offices. For those of you already booked on the March 2010 course in London, I look forward to seeing you there.

Software architecture for developers

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:46:15 GMT

We've been running our software architecture course for a couple of years now and although we've consistently received very positive feedback, we're always looking for ways to improve it. And that's exactly what we've done over the past few weeks.

First of all, the name of the course has been changed to "Software architecture for developers" as it better reflects the intent of the course, which is about broadening people's software development skills and making them more architecturally aware. We want people to better understand how to make design decisions on software projects and be more confident that their choices will work.

The other major change to the course is that the structure now reflects the new organisation of the website, where content is broken down into the following categories:

What is software architecture?: This category covers all of the basics such as what software architecture is all about and why it's important.
What is the role of a software architect?: This is probably the largest category on the site where you'll find lots of discussion about what software architects (should, in our opinion) do.
How do you define software architecture?: This category is about putting software architecture into practice, where you'll find articles about what drives architecture, technology selection, dealing with non-functional requirements and so on.
How do you share software architecture?: Having a software architecture is only part of the puzzle and this category is all about collaborating, documenting and sharing it.
How do you deliver software architecture?: The final category is about delivering the architecture; covering aspects such as process, methodology, evaluating and testing architectures.

In addition, more exercises have been introduced and we now have more dedicated content to delve into things like creating software architecture documentation and evaluating software architectures. This content *was* included before through a number of supplementary presentations, but the new structure gives these topics their own focus. You can take a (thumbnail sized) peek at the slides and you can find more detailed information about the course at http://www.softwarearchitecturefordevelopers.com. The next public runs of the course this year are the 8th of December (London) and 14th of December (Paris), but you can see the Skills Matter website for other dates.

Feel free to get in touch (e-mail or Twitter) if you have any questions or would like talk about a private/internal run of the course for your team.

Software architecture training in London

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:32:00 GMT

The next run of our software architecture training course is taking place at Skills Matter in London on the 15th and 16th of September. I posted a short review of the June 2009 course a while back but it's aimed squarely at software developers that want to get into software architecture and become more "architecturally aware". We like to think that our approach to software architecture is down to earth and pragmatic, while our training approach is a refreshing change:

This workshop is completly different from what you are used to where you are sent by your company to be trained. You don't arrive, sit down, listen and leave the room being an architect. Instead you only go through 50 slides in two days, and spend your time working in small groups and interacting with the others. At the end you leave the workshop with your head full of ideas.

We have some time in the schedule for one or two presentations so I might provide a preview of Documenting your software architecture - why and how? or Broadening the T, which I'm presenting at the Software Architect 2009 conference at the end of the month. Either way, I'm sure there'll be some great discussion about software architecture.

You can book online via the Skills Matter website, and the price is £1095.

June 2009 training course

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:06:00 GMT

I ran our From Developer to Architect training course (Coding the Architecture Workshop) earlier this week at Skills Matter in London. 8 people came along, all with slightly different levels of software development/architecture experience and technology background. Historically this course has predominantly attracted people with a Java background, although this is starting to change with more people having experience of the .NET framework. As Antonio Goncalves mentions in his blog entry about the course:

This workshop is completly different from what you are used to where you are sent by your company to be trained. You don't arrive, sit down, listen and leave the room being an architect. Instead you only go through 50 slides in two days, and spend your time working in small groups and interacting with the others. At the end you leave the workshop with your head full of ideas.

If you've been along to one of the Coding the Architecture user groups then you'll know what to expect from this course. There's an element of presentation to set a baseline level of knowledge, but most of the course is very interactive and collaborative, with a focus on nurturing discussion rather than just being a 2-day question and answer session. From my perspective, it's a fantastic course to run because even *I* leave the workshop with my head full of ideas! There's some interesting discussion on TWiT 197 on how education should be less about learning how to pass exams and more about creativity/thinking for yourself. This is exactly the rationale behind our course too.

You can find more information about what the course covers on our training page, but I wanted to share some insight into the case study exercise. It's a collaborative exercise where groups are asked to define an architecture from a small set of functional and non-functional requirements. Given that everybody has different backgrounds and experiences, there's no right answer and the range of technical solutions can often be quite vast. What's important about the case study is looking at how to approach the architecture definition exercise ... which inputs to consider, where to start, how to convey the architecture, what level of detail to go to and, of course, which technologies to choose. The file linked below includes some of the diagrams produced as part of the case study; highlighting the different views, level of detail and notation used to convey solutions.

Diagrams from our "From Developer to Architect" training course (ZIP, 2.7MB)

Even without knowledge of the case study, the diagrams illustrate the variation in how architecture can be conveyed. Expect some essays about this and our overall approach to software architecture in the future; and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions about the course or how we can help you with your own software architectures. Oh, and thanks once again to everybody that came along and made it such an enjoyable couple of days. :-)

Interview from DevWeek 2009

Wed, 20 May 2009 21:55:00 GMT

Eric Nelson from Microsoft interviewed me at the DevWeek 2009 conference about our software architecture workshop, transitioning into an architecture role and whether architects should code. Take a look ... it's a nice overview of our approach to software architecture and to training software developers to be more architecturally aware.

There are some other interesting interviews from DevWeek 2009 on the YouTube channel too. Thanks Eric!

Software architecture training in London

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:30:00 GMT

The next public run of our software architecture training is taking place on the 8th and 9th of June, at Skills Matter in London. This is a two-day course that Kevin and I put together to explain what software architecture is and what the role is all about. It's aimed at anybody with software development experience who would like to become more architecturally aware and draw some pictures on whiteboards in the process!

The course is about broadening your software development skills while being designed to take full advantage of the technical knowledge that you already have, whether your background is with Java, .NET or anything else. In the current financial climate, now is exactly the time to broaden your skills and become more architecturally aware.

See the Skills Matter website for other dates and costs. Book before the 9th of May to receive the early booking discount.

Software architecture training in London

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:40:00 GMT

The next public run of our software architecture training is taking place on the 2nd/3rd of September at Skills Matter. Join us for a course that takes a pragmatic view of what software architecture is all about, what's expected of software architects and how to undertake the role in the real-world.

See the Skills Matter website for more details.

Software architecture training for £500

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:53:02 GMT

The first run of our software architecture training is taking place on the 16th/17th of June at Skills Matter. As is traditional with Skills Matter courses, the first teach is offered at a discounted rate, meaning that you can get two days of training for £500 per person. Join us for a course that takes a pragmatic view of what software architecture is all about, what's expected of software architects and how to undertake the role in the real-world.

If you want to come along but can't make it this month, we have another course taking place on the 2nd/3rd of September. See the Skills Matter website for standard pricing and early booking discounts.