3 Questions that I am going to cover tomorrow in my talk:

- Why is software complex?
- What is bad design?
- How to fix it?

See you tomorrow at TechEd

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I just quickly wanted to write down a brief introduction to my ‘Combating Software Entropy‘ at Tech-Ed Middle East 2010

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I am pleased to announce that DotNetME Podcasts are live now !!!
To start with we have published our first episode that talks about SOLID principles. In this episode my good friend Ron is asking me about the desing principles around

- OCP : Open Close Principle
- SRP: Single Responsiblity Principle
- DI: Dependency Inversion
- LSP: Liskov Substitution Principle

The show was recorded way back in October 2009. Its a bit late but I’d say its all worth it. So download it, listen to it and let us know yor feedback.

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I am glad to share this with you all that I will be speaking at this year’s edition of Tech-Ed Middle East in Dubai, UAE. More details on the event itself are available at http://www.teched.ae/

My first session is confirmed I will be talking about ‘Combating Software Entropy with Design Patterns and Principals ‘.

My second session is still in the pipe-line and hopefully its going to be a panel discussion on ‘Agile Architecture’, more along the lines of my current discussion listed in this blog post

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So here i am writing this second blog post in series on Agile Posts (read the first one here).

As promised in my last post, and after reading my friend Ron’s post I am going to try and answer the following important question. :-

Whats the role of an Architect in an Agile team?

Contrary to the common believe that Agile doesn’t need architecture (or an Architect role for that matter), Agile (or specifically XP) doesn’t imply Design Is Dead (as Martin Fowler puts it).

Since Agile doesn’t believe in BDUF (Big Design Up Front Paradigm), its opponents tend to claim that Agile doesn’t require architects which i should say is not the case in reality. (Note: Agilists may say that they don’t need Architects sitting in silos segregated from the developers (aka Ivory Tower Architect). Which IMHO is a right thing to say)

So, Agile does indeed emphasize on importance of Architecture, the only difference is, instead of planned design (BDUF) it focuses on evolutionary design. In practice evolutionary design doesn’t mean Zero design in the beginning, but rather ‘just enough design that is easy to evolve/change/maintain’ with passage of time. Obviously, purists on both side of the camp would argue that, BDUF= planned design and Evolutionary Design = Zero Up front design. Since no one can foresee the future and requirements are always changing, reality perhaps lies somewhere in between. What I am suggesting is that from my experience i have seen evolutionary design tend to work better in general (yes, there are no silver bullets here). I can go on talking about this, but I’d rather focus on the role of an Architect in an Agile world and for that i believe following are some key activities (in addition to vanilla responsibilities) an Architect needs to own and be responsible for:

• Agile Architect is hands-on and participates in day-to-day development
• Agile Architect is very keen on maintaining the code-quality ( through Code Analysis , Reviews etc.)
• Agile Architect understands all the stake holders and works towards maximising their value
• Agile Architect works towards understanding the business domain
• Agile Architect can not predict the unseen future but can anticipate volatile areas and provide design guide lines accordingly ( a la: Design for Change)
• Agile Architect makes sure that everyone follows Agile Principles, specially the ones outlined by Uncle Bob)

I think the most important take-away is that Agile Architect is hands-on and participates in the team through out the development life cycle rather than a big bang contribution in the beginning.

IMHO only special agile developers can become Agile Architects and not all software architects are Agile by default.

I think i will leave this discussion at it at the moment and would take it further depending upon your comments/feedback….

Its 3 AM in the morning and i should get some ZZZZ…

ps: also check out the following links:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/177764/does-a-software-architect-have-a-role-in-agile-esp-scrum

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html

http://www.agilearchitect.org/agile/role.htm

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As i posted earlier that i will be presenting @ IASA Singapore’s chapter evening. It turned out to be an interesting session and i got the chance to interact with the audience and hear their pain points on composite architecture and enterprise mashups.

Enteprisewise initiatives, sharing data across services/apps and need for top quality tools came out as the most crucial elements to the success of composite architecture. I also heard some interesting remarks from the audience. One of the gentlement mentioned that there is nothing that composite arch/enterprise mashup offers that couldnt be done with traditional apps/services. I’d say lets look at this analogy:

“if you are travel from point x to y, you could either walk, run, ride a horse, drive, commute through train, or fly in a plane. Ofcourse it will depend on the distance b/w x and y. Among other things it will also depend on your mind set and approach. if you want to cover the distance in excess of hundreds of kilometers by riding a horse then God speed. Surely you will get there but the question is how much will it cost you in terms of time and effort”

I strongly believe in composite arhictecture and enterprise mashups. This truly leads to realization of potential promised by SOA.

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As i posted earlier that i will be presenting @ IASA Singapore’s chapter evening. It turned out to be an interesting session and i got the chance to interact with the audience and hear their pain points on composite architecture and enterprise mashups.

Enteprisewise initiatives, sharing data across services/apps and need for top quality tools came out as the most crucial elements to the success of composite architecture. I also heard some interesting remarks from the audience. One of the gentlement mentioned that there is nothing that composite arch/enterprise mashup offers that couldnt be done with traditional apps/services. I’d say lets look at this analogy:

“if you are travel from point x to y, you could either walk, run, ride a horse, drive, commute through train, or fly in a plane. Ofcourse it will depend on the distance b/w x and y. Among other things it will also depend on your mind set and approach. if you want to cover the distance in excess of hundreds of kilometers by riding a horse then God speed. Surely you will get there but the question is how much will it cost you in terms of time and effort”

I strongly believe in composite arhictecture and enterprise mashups. This truly leads to realization of potential promised by SOA.

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I will be doing a presentation on Composite Architecture later today @ IASA Singapore’s chapter evening.

This presentation will talk about how the
software architecture paradigm is shifting in response to agile enterprises. This talk will intend to de-mystify composite architecture and then in the end present available tools and technologies that can be used to build applications and services that are based on composite architecture.

If you are in or around Singapore on 17th of July 2008 then feel free to join us.

Venue is :9 Temasek Boulevard | #35-03 Suntec Tower Two | Singapore 038989

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<dotNetBulls/> hosted their first technical event on 11th of March, 2008. Topic for this event was “Web 2.0 in Enterprise” and it was hosted by Linda Chong, from Microsoft. Linda Chong works for Microsoft in the capacity of Architect Evangelist and she has 12 years of extensive experience on management, consulting, evangelism, architecture design/review, pre-sales engagement and systems integration in the areas of SOA, Web 2.0, e-business/e-commerce and enterprise application integration (EAI). Event started with Hammad Rajjoub introducing <dotNetBulls/> and speaker.

Linda started off with talking about Software + Services and Web 2.0 and where it stands today and then moved towards Microsoft’s Silverlight and its applications in local/international market. It was a successful event that saw a conference room filled with geeks, snacks (thanks to SDC) and guest speaker engaged in technical dialogue for more than an hour.

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I will be presenting at ITARC conference organized by IASA in KL. I will be presenting a break out session on “Composite Architecture”. I will share the slides with all of you shortly.

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