The Modern Software Architect
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The document discusses the role of the modern software architect. It provides definitions of a software architect as someone who makes high-level design choices and dictates technical standards. The main responsibilities of an architect are to limit development choices by choosing standards and frameworks and communicating designs to developers. The document also discusses how the role of the architect changes with the size of the organization and types of architectures like enterprise, solution, and application architects. It notes challenges with more agile development where architecture may not receive focus and issues like technical debt can increase over time.
![Example
2
-‐
gmaven
! Generate
lists
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source
code
scanning
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.gmaven</groupId>
<artifactId>gmaven-‐plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.5</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>generate-‐sources</phase>
<goals>
<goal>execute</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<source>
src/main/gscripts/services.groovy
</source>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.thoughtworks.qdox</groupId>
<artifactId>qdox</artifactId>
<version>1.12.1</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>
def
dir
=
new
File(project.basedir.parent,
"gps_persistence/src/main/java")
def
builder
=
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builder.addSourceTree(dir)
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}
}
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servicelist.withPrintWriter
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'|Method’
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}
}](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/the-recovered-architect-140318152419-phpapp02/85/The-Modern-Software-Architect-41-320.jpg)
The Modern Software Architect
- 1. The modern architect A Pragmatic View from the Trenches
- 2. One definition ! ”Software Architect is a computer manager who makes high-‐level design choices and dictates technical standards, including software coding standards, tools and platforms”
- 3. One definition ! ”Software Architect is a computer manager who makes high-‐level design choices and dictates technical standards, including software coding standards, tools and platforms”
- 4. Main Responsibility ! Limiting choices available during development by ! Choosing a standard way of development ! Creating, defining or choosing a framework for the application ! Recognizing potential reuse by ! Observe and understand the broader system environment ! Creating component design ! Having knowledge of other applications in the organisation ! Subdivide a complex application into manageable entities ! Grasp the functionality of each component within the application ! Understand the component interactions and dependencies ! Communicate these concepts to developers
- 5. Enterprise Architectural Growth Startup/ Small-‐cap Mid-‐cap Enterprise
- 6. Tiered architects Strategic Thinking System Interactions Communication Design Enterprise Erchitect Across Project Highly Abstracted Across Organisation Minimal, High Level Solution Architect Focused on Solution Very Detailed Multiple Teams Detailed Application Architect Component Re-‐ use, Maintainability Single Application Single Project Very Detailed
- 7. The Dictating Ivory Tower Enterprise Architect Solution Architect Application Architect Developer Developer Application Architect Solution Architect Application Architect Application Architect Developer Developer UML Design Manual Req spec TCO ROI EJB MOM ESB Business Intelligence
- 8. Agile That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have to come to value
- 9. Agile That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more Up-‐front design UML/BML Organisation ROI/TCO Iterative Real Options Retrospectives Craftmanship
- 10. Enterprise Agility Adoption Startup/ Small-‐cap Mid-‐cap Enterprise
- 11. Agile Iterations Options/ Plans Execution Validation Reflection ”Tends to be focussed on delivering functionality rather than looking after their architecture” Project Manager ?
- 12. Irrespectively of scale ! Cross-‐cutting concerns such as logging and exception handling ! Security; including authentication, authorisation and confidentiality of sensitive data ! Performance, scalability, availability and other quality attributes ! Audit and other regulatory requirements ! Real-‐world constraints of the environment ! Interoperability/integration with other software systems ! Operational, support and maintenance requirements ! Consistency of structure and approach to solving problems ! Implementing features across the codebase ! Evaluating that the foundations you’re building will allow you to deliver what you set out to deliver
- 14. Time, Leading to..? ! Software Entropy receives no focus ! as a system is modified, its disorder, or entropy, always increases. This is known as software entropy ! When a program is modified, its complexity will increase, provided that one does not actively work against this. ! Technical Debt increases ! a neologistic metaphor referring to the eventual consequences of poor software architecture and software development within a codebase. ! Technical Debt will increase until eventually only rewrite is possible ! Tribal Knowledge is not Internalized ! Tribal Knowledge or Know-‐How is the collective wisdom of the organization. It is the sum of all the knowledge and capabilities of all the people. ! Knowledge must be transferred or else behaviour is duplicated or forgotten ! Who is around the agile project to identify reuse and manage complexity?
- 15. What IF ! ”Software Architect is a computer manager who makes high-‐level design choices and dictates technical standards, including software coding standards, tools and platforms” ! ”Software Architect is a techo polymath who offers high-‐level design choices and and facilitates best technical practises, including software coding standards, tools and platforms”
- 16. Main Responsibilities ! Technical Leadership of the product ! Set the standards for development ! Provide high-‐level design practises ! Ensure best practise and communicate these ! Minimize software entropy and increase product quality ! Ensure that the architecture is sufficiently documented ! Enterprise collaborator and networker ! Identify and support re-‐use ! Collaborate with enterprise architects to incorporate cross-‐ cutting concerns
- 17. Convergence BUSINESS = IT Project Manager
- 18. Up-‐Front Project Planning Structure Understand the significant structural elements and how they fit together based on the architectural drivers Design and Decomposition down to containers and components Risk Identify and mitigate the highest priority risk Risk-‐storming and concrete experiments Vision Create and communicate a vision for the team to work with Context, container and component diagrams Just enough up front design to create firm foundations for the software product and its delivery
- 19. SÅDAN!
- 20. In the face of Continuous Delivery ! Set the technology stack ! Control the build process ! Be responsible for deployment ! May be handled by the Build Engineer
- 21. Shifting the focus ! Focus for an application architect in the presence of working software must be to facilitate the team to make the best decisions and help provide the best possible platform for further extension
- 22. Mastering Skillset Remember Describe Name Find List Relate Write Understand Explain Compare Discuss Predict Outline Restate Apply Complete Use Examine Illustrate Classify Solve Analyze Compare contrast Examine Explain Identify Categorize Investigate Evaluate Justify Assess Prioritize Recommend Rate Decide Create Plan Invent Compose Design Construct Imagine Bloom’s Taxonomy
- 23. Problem Solving in your Team Stack Overflow Google Architect Smart Guy
- 24. Stack Overflow I need to send multiple requests to many different web services and receive the results. The problem is that, if I send the requests one by one it takes so long as I need to send and process all individually. I am wondering how I can send all the requests at once and receive the results.
- 25. Top 3 Ludicrous Answers ! It has got various option to develop this: ! JMS : quality of service and management, e.g. redelivery attempt, dead message queue, load management, scalability, clustering, monitoring, etc. ! Simply using the Observer pattern for this. For more details OODesign and How to solve produce and consumer follow this Kodelog ! Looking at the problem, you need to integrate your application with 10+ different webservices. While making all the calls asynchronous. This can be done easily with Apache Camel. ! You can ask your jax-‐ws implementation to generate asynchronous bindings for the web service.
- 26. Availability ! A software architect must have enough time and interest to answer all questions from teams and individuals ! A software architect must facilitate learning and mentoring ! A software architect must communicate shared models and shared visions ! By having high developer interaction the software architect can ! Identify re-‐use and componentization ! Increase awareness of cross-‐cutting concerns
- 27. Quality Assurance ! Code Review is a systematic examination of computer source code. It is intended to find and fix mistakes overlooked in the initial development phase improving both the overall quality of software and the developers’ skills. ! Automatic as well as manual intervention ! Automatic testing ! Automatic software analysis ! Peer review
- 28. Automatic Testing ! Accepted curse of unit testing ! Documentation ! Regression ! Works best on loose coupled entities ! Focus on Integration testing ! End to end scenario support ! Ensure that Input leads to Output ! Helped by virtualization and continuous deployments ! Watch out for maintenance costs
- 29. Automatic Software Verification ! Perform automatic analysis of source code and binaries ! Tools such as PMD, Checkstyle, Findbugs, jdepend, classycle, Emma, Cobertura, Pathfinder, ThreadSafe, Macker, clirr, Tattletale (for Java development) ! Or collective in reporting systems such as SonarQube, QALab or Xradar ! Important to apply qualified analysis on top of the result
- 30. Peer Review ! Formal or informal collaborate effort of cross-‐ examination of source code ! Review improve quality by ! Rejecting or improving commits ! Committers and reviewers learn from each other ! Motivation to do boring tasks ! But can also improve overall morale and team coherence ! Important to keep an open culture and avoid blame game For any software team not already doing so, the single most effective thing It can do to improve product quality is to introduce a code review process
- 31. The Code doesn’t Tell the Whole Story ! Code may hint at ! (Functionality) ! Programming language ! Architectural tiers ! Naming standards ! Patterns and idioms ! But even those hints may be misinterpreted ! Code may not reveal ! Why the technologies were chosen ! The overall structure of the system ! Whether any common patterns or principles are used ! How and where to add new functionality ! How security, stability, scalability, etc is achieved
- 39. Documenting Architecture ! Documentation is not hard ! Briefly outline technologies and choices ! Keep the stories short and to the point ! Create simplified diagrams ! Keep it with the source code under revision control
- 40. Example 1 -‐ AsciiDoc ! Extremely simple markup, integrates with builds <profile> <!-‐-‐ ========================================================================= -‐-‐> <!-‐-‐ Include a documentation profile if the project have src/main/asciidoc -‐-‐> <!-‐-‐ Adds a process-‐asciidoc goal to the generate-‐resources phase -‐-‐> <!-‐-‐ ========================================================================= -‐-‐> <id>fdc-‐documentation-‐profile</id> <activation> <file><exists>${basedir}/src/main/asciidoc</exists> </file> </activation> <build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.asciidoctor</groupId> <artifactId>asciidoctor-‐maven-‐plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <backend>html</backend> <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/docs</outputDirectory> <sourceHighlighter>coderay</sourceHighlighter> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> </profile> Ex
- 41. Example 2 -‐ gmaven ! Generate lists from source code scanning <plugin> <groupId>org.codehaus.gmaven</groupId> <artifactId>gmaven-‐plugin</artifactId> <version>1.5</version> <executions> <execution> <phase>generate-‐sources</phase> <goals> <goal>execute</goal> </goals> <configuration> <source> src/main/gscripts/services.groovy </source> </configuration> </execution> </executions> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>com.thoughtworks.qdox</groupId> <artifactId>qdox</artifactId> <version>1.12.1</version> </dependency> </dependencies> </plugin> def dir = new File(project.basedir.parent, "gps_persistence/src/main/java") def builder = new com.thoughtworks.qdox.JavaDocBuilder() builder.addSourceTree(dir) def services = builder.classes.findAll { it.annotations.find { it.type.value == "org.springframework.stereotype.Service" } } def servicelist = new File(project.build.directory, "service.ad") servicelist.withPrintWriter { pw -‐> services.each { pw.println "+${it.name}+” if (it.comment) pw.println "${it.comment}” pw.println '[cols="2", options="header"1]’ pw.println '|===’ pw.println '|Method’ pw.println '|Description’ it.methods.each { if (it.public) { pw.println "|${it.name}” pw.println "|${it.comment?:''}” } } pw.println '|===’ } }
- 42. Example 3 -‐ Violet ! Simple tools for structural diagrams
- 43. Are you responsive? ! All changes to a software product must be reversible ! Deployments fail for many reasons outwith control, making this a real risk in any software project ! However the risk is easy to avert by proper rollback mechanisms ! Projects are no longer static, and must be palpable by engineering staff and newcomers ! Especially when projects are signed off ! Ask yourself these questions ! How long time does it take to check-‐out the software, circumvent a simple problem and re-‐release your product to production environment? ! How long time does it take to integrate a new developer with a workable developer environment?
- 44. In total ! Engage in Just Enough Up-‐Front Design ! Set the standards and the builds ! Evolve the documentation ! Master Code Reviews ! Be the go-‐to guy ! Be responsible for the product artefact
- 45. Q (+A?) I left the murky, bedraggled streets of home to venture on a Journey for a thousand miles and more. I had a vision and a purpose and everything around me sprang to life In a newfound thrill of excitement. Arriving at my final destination I saw wonders beyond compare and such Joy and such life that everything fell into place and harmony. How can this be of wonder, you ask, when I reveal the final destination As the origins of my journey. But alas, everything old can be born again From a new perspective