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Software Architect

Architecting is about balancing

97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know – 5/97

Balance stakeholders’ interests with technical requirements

When we think of architecting software, we tend to think first of classical technical activities, like modularizing systems, defining interfaces, allocating responsibility, applying patterns, and optimizing performance. Architects also need to consider security, usability, supportability, release management, and deployment options, among others things. But these technical and procedural issues must be balanced with the needs of stakeholders and their interests. Taking a “stakeholders and interests” approach in requirements analysis is an excellent way to ensure completeness of requirements specifications for the software being developed.

Analyzing the stakeholders, and their interests, in the process by which an organization develops software, and in the organization itself, reveals the ultimate set of priorities bearing on a software architect. Software architecting is about balancing this set of priorities, over the short and long term, in a way that is appropriate to the context at hand.

Consider, for example, the engineering department of a software-as-a-service business. The business likely has certain priorities, such as meeting contractual obligations, generating revenue, ensuring customer referenceability, containing costs, and creating valuable technology assets. These business priorities may translate to departmental priorities like ensuring the functionality and correctness, and “quality attributes” (i.e. “-ilities”) of the software being developed, as well as ensuring the productivity of the development team, ensuring the sustainability and auditability of development operations, and the adaptability and longevity of the software products.

It is the architect‘s job to not only create functional, quality software for users, but also to do so while balancing the other departmental priorities, with the cost containment interests of the business‘s CEO, with the ease-of-administration interests of the operations staff, with the ease-of-learning and ease-of-maintenance interests of future programming staff, and with best practices of the software architect‘s profession.

The architect may choose to consciously tilt the balance in favor of one priority in the short term, but had better maintain a proper balance over the long term in order to truly do the job well. And the balance that is struck needs to be appropriate to the context at hand, considering factors such as the expected lifespan of the software, the criticality of the software to the business, and the technological and financial culture of the organization.

In summary, software architecting is about more than just the classical technical activities; it is about balancing technical requirements with the business requirements of stakeholders in the project.

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Categories
Software Architect

Communication is King; Clarity and Leadership its humble servants

97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know – 4/97

All too often software architects sit in their ivory towers, dictating specifications, technology decisions, and technology direction to the developers below. More often than not this leads to dissension in the ranks, quickly followed by a revolt by the masses, finally resulting in a software product that doesn’t even come close to resembling the original requirements. Every software architect should know how to communicate the goals and objectives of a software project. The key to effective communication is clarity and leadership.

Clarity describes how you communicate. No one on your team is going to read a 100 page architecture decisions document. Being clear and concise in the way you communicate your ideas is vital to the success of any software project. Keep things as simple as possible at the start of a project, and by all means do not start writing lengthy Word documents. Use tools like Visio to create simple diagrams to convey your thoughts. Keep them simple, for they will almost certainly be changing frequently. Another effective means of communication is informal whiteboard meetings. Nothing gets your ideas across better than bringing in a group of developers (or other architects) into a room and whiteboarding your ideas. Also, be sure to always have a digital camera with you at all times. Nothing is more frustrating than being pushed out of a meeting room with all of your ideas stuck on a white board. Snap a picture, download it, and share it via a wiki to the rest of the team. So throw away the lengthy Word documents and focus more on getting your ideas across, and afterwards worry about recording the details of your architectural decisions.

One thing most software architects fail to realize is that a software architect is also a leader. As a leader, you must gain the respect of your co-workers to work effectively in a healthy and effective environment. Keeping developers in the dark about the big picture or why decisions were made is a clear recipe for disaster. Having the developer on your side creates a collaborative environment whereby decisions you make as an architect are validated. In turn, you get buy-in from developers by keeping them involved in the architecture process. Work with developers, not against them. Keep in mind that all team members (e.g. QA team, Business Analysis, and Project Managers as well as developers) require clear communication and leadership. Employing clarity and effective leadership will improve communication and create a strong and healthy work environment.

If “Communication is King” then clarity and leadership are its humble servants.

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