The Modern Software Architect

The modern architect A Pragmatic View from the Trenches

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”

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

Enterprise Architectural Growth

Startup/Small-‐cap

Mid-‐cap

Enterprise

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

The Dictating Ivory Tower

Enterprise Architect

Solution Architect


Developer Developer


Solution Architect



Developer Developer

UML

Design Manual Req

spec

TCO

ROI

EJB

MOM

ESB

Business Intelligence

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

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

Enterprise Agility Adoption

Startup/Small-‐cap

Mid-‐cap

Enterprise

Agile Iterations

Options/Plans

Execution Validation

Reflection

”Tends to be focussed on delivering functionality rather than looking after their architecture”

Project Manager

?

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

Agile Architecture

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?

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”

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

Convergence

BUSINESS = IT

Project Manager

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

SÅDAN!

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

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

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

Problem Solving in your Team

Stack Overflow

Google

Architect Smart Guy

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recognize this place?

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

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

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 '|===’ } }

Example 3 -‐ Violet !   Simple tools for structural diagrams

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?

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

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

The Modern Software Architect

Technology

Transcript of The Modern Software Architect