From Developer to Architect (and back again)

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From Developer To Architect (and back again) Matthew Rudy Jacobs @ BrightonRuby 2019

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I'm @MatthewRudy and I'm a Developer

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But until a few months ago I was a "Technical Architect"

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From Developer To Architect (and back again)

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Lead Developer of a Unicorn: What next?

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Junior Developer -> Developer Developer -> Senior Developer Senior Developer -> Lead Developer Lead Developer -> ??????

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Engineering Manager? Head of Engineering? CTO?

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I became an "Architect"

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What is a "Technical Architect"

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"A developer who goes to meetings, writes documents, and draws diagrams"

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What do I do all day?

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Working in a Castle

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Transporting Prisoners

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Understanding the Problem

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Research and Validation

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Sketching Solutions

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Firming up the solution

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Writing it up

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Presenting it

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Attending £1bn meetings

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Deﬁnitely NOT Coding!!!

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My Magnum Opus!

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Why does Government need Architects?

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Government Lacks Technical Skills

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but needs to make Technical Decisions all the time

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Historically they would call in Consultants 20 x £2000 / day for 6 months

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At the end, they provide a report: "Buy this £million system" (then pay us £10millon more to customise it)

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This is happening 100s of times over right now for Brexit!!!

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Instead, we say

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"You don't need this!!!"

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"Use Ruby"

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"Use Postgres"

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"Host it on Github"

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"Deploy it to Heroku"

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"Here's our Kubernetes Cluster!"

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"I will design the system and lead the team to build this in house"

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In Summary

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Architects Save the Government £Millions By making decent Technical Decisions

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Architects Save YOU £Millions By making decent Technical Decisions

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Does your business need an Architect?

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"It Depends"

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"Are my Lead Developers already doing Architecture?"

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"Would it be better if that's all they did?"

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Importantly: Architecture is not the goal its a tool!!

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We only want: "Just Enough Architecture"

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so...

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Why did I go back to Development?

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Government is really slow

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I like making things

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I want to buy a house

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Finally

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1 minute of Architecture

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"software architecture is the set of signiﬁcant design decisions about how the software is organised"

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"it turns a big problem into smaller, more manageable problems"

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"it provides a vocabulary for talking about complex ideas"

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"it enables agility"

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"Just Enough Architecture" no more

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https://pragprog.com/book/ mkdsa/design-it

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https://c4model.com/

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https://fundingcircle.github.io/ fc4-framework/

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Thanks!

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https://HongKong.CodeConf.io

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Find me online: @MatthewRudy