Tweet
Tweet

Slide 1

Slide 1 text

Why Software Architects Fail 10 Diseases You Should Know About Stefan Tilkov, INNOQ @stilkov

Slide 2

Slide 2 text

@stilkov n. A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms. n. A condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and harmful. n. Obsolete Lack of ease; trouble. dis ease (dĭ-zēzˈ) ·

Slide 3

Slide 3 text

@stilkov 1. Over-Generalization Drive

Slide 4

Slide 4 text

@stilkov Symptom: Seeing commonalities in everything and turning them into generic solutions

Slide 5

Slide 5 text

@stilkov Phases in a Developer’s Life

Slide 6

Slide 6 text

@stilkov 1. The Enthusiastic Developer “This stuff is cool - let’s build programs! For real people!”

Slide 7

Slide 7 text

@stilkov Boring, boring, boring. Create Customer Find Customer List Customers Edit Customer Delete Customer Create Order Find Order List Orders Edit Order Delete Order Create Product Find Product List Products Edit Product Delete Product

Slide 8

Slide 8 text

@stilkov 2. The Disillusioned Developer “Oh. Real people have boring problems.”

Slide 9

Slide 9 text

@stilkov Create Customer Find Customer List Customers Edit Customer Delete Customer Create Order Find Order List Orders Edit Order Delete Order Create Product Find Product List Products Edit Product Delete Product

Slide 10

Slide 10 text

@stilkov Create Thing Find Thing List Thing Edit Thing Delete Thing

Slide 11

Slide 11 text

@stilkov 3. The Enthusiastic Architect “Generic solutions! Cool!” Create Thing Find Thing List Thing Edit Thing Delete Thing

Slide 12

Slide 12 text

@stilkov 4. The Disillusioned Architect KISS YAGNI Lean Minimable viable product Story focus

Slide 13

Slide 13 text

‘ ‘ @stilkov When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don't know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all- encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don't actually mean anything at all. These are the people I call Architecture Astronauts. Joel Spolsky “Don’t Let Architecture Astronauts Scare you”, http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html

Slide 14

Slide 14 text

@stilkov 5. The “Wise” Architect Answer: It depends. Question: *

Slide 15

Slide 15 text

@stilkov 2. Domain Allergy

Slide 16

Slide 16 text

@stilkov Symptom: Treating the domain as a negligible nuisance

Slide 17

Slide 17 text

@stilkov Application (100%) Configuration 10% The 
 Generic
 Thing
 Machine 90%

Slide 18

Slide 18 text

@stilkov 80% 20% Functionality: 320% 80% Time/Effort:

Slide 19

Slide 19 text

@stilkov Configuration The 
 Generic
 Thing
 Machine Customer Developer

Slide 20

Slide 20 text

@stilkov The benefits of choices already made Microsoft .NET + Visual Studio SAP et. al. Ruby on Rails

Slide 21

Slide 21 text

@stilkov 3. Obsessive Specialization Disorder

Slide 22

Slide 22 text

@stilkov Symptom: Believing every problem to be unique, even if it’s been solved 1,000 times

Slide 23

Slide 23 text

@stilkov Task: Read a file of text, determine the n most frequently used words, and print out a sorted list of those words along with their frequencies.

Slide 24

Slide 24 text

@stilkov Donald Knuth Doug McIlroy Dr. Drang, http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less-egg/ 10-page literal Pascal program, including innovative new data structure tr -cs A-Za-z '\n' | tr A-Z a-z | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | sed ${1}q

Slide 25

Slide 25 text

@stilkov 4. Unhealthy Complexity Attraction

Slide 26

Slide 26 text

@stilkov Symptom: Being so smart you can’t be bothered by simple approaches

Slide 27

Slide 27 text

@stilkov Benefits of Complexity > Challenging work > New and interesting experience > Self-esteem > Community > Barrier to entry > Job security

Slide 28

Slide 28 text

@stilkov 5. Analysis Paralysis

Slide 29

Slide 29 text

@stilkov Symptom: Taking longer to evaluate than to actually do it

Slide 30

Slide 30 text

@stilkov Vendor Selection Collect and agree on requirements Week 0 Conduct market research Week 8 Send out RFP to selected vendors Week 10 Evaluate responses, create shortlist, start PoC Week 14 Evaluate PoC results, recommend vendor X Week 20 Accept your CEO picked vendor Y Week 26

Slide 31

Slide 31 text

@stilkov 6. Innovation Addiction

Slide 32

Slide 32 text

@stilkov Symptom: Things become progressively less fun the closer you get to production

Slide 33

Slide 33 text

@stilkov Symptom: Using fashionable technology because it’s popular
 (a.k.a. conference-driven architecture)

Slide 34

Slide 34 text

‘ ‘ @stilkov Mindful choice of technology gives engineering minds real freedom: the freedom to contemplate bigger questions. Technology for its own sake is snake oil. Dan McKinley
 http://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology

Slide 35

Slide 35 text

@stilkov Image Credit: Dan Dickinson, https://flic.kr/p/9mUs73

Slide 36

Slide 36 text

@stilkov 7. Severe Tunneling Fixation

Slide 37

Slide 37 text

‘ ‘ @stilkov I know what I like And I like what I know … Genesis

Slide 38

Slide 38 text

@stilkov Symptom: Enforcing an architectural approach that clashes with the framework, libraries or tools you use.

Slide 39

Slide 39 text

@stilkov 8. Asset Addiction

Slide 40

Slide 40 text

@stilkov Symptom: Becoming so attached to a particular tool/library/framework it becomes a fit for every problem.

Slide 41

Slide 41 text

@stilkov 9. Exaggerated Risk Aversion

Slide 42

Slide 42 text

@stilkov Symptom: Sticking with horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE tools because they’re there

Slide 43

Slide 43 text

@stilkov Symptom: Confusing “easy” with simple, creating accidental complexity

Slide 44

Slide 44 text

@stilkov simple complex easy hard Rich Hickey, “Simple Made Easy”, http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

Slide 45

Slide 45 text

@stilkov 10. Impact Dissonance

Slide 46

Slide 46 text

@stilkov Symptom: Becoming too detached from the actual system that is being delivered

Slide 47

Slide 47 text

@stilkov Related: Governance Megalomania

Slide 48

Slide 48 text

@stilkov Symptom: Believing everything has to be approved by you to ensure it meets architecture standards

Slide 49

Slide 49 text

@stilkov What architects want to do Shape strategy 30 % Make important decisions 30 % Mentor developers 20 % Explore technologies 20 %

Slide 50

Slide 50 text

@stilkov What others think architects do Slow down development 20 % Pick the wrong tools 20 % Refuse to learn from devs 20 % Define annoying rules 40 %

Slide 51

Slide 51 text

@stilkov What architects actually do Do technical stuff 5 % Act as salespeople 30 % Try to be involved 35 % Defend architecture 30 %

Slide 52

Slide 52 text

@stilkov Image Credit: Sean Michael Ragan, http://flic.kr/p/8XEm6L

Slide 53

Slide 53 text

@stilkov I don’t have an answer …

Slide 54

Slide 54 text

@stilkov … so here’s one, anyway

Slide 55

Slide 55 text

@stilkov An Architect’s Success Formula Dogma and rules 10 % Experience 20 % Pragmatism 20 % Flexibility 10 % Minimalism 10 % Trends and future needs 10 % Experiments & PoCs 10 % Hands-on participation 10 % Vendor advice 0 %

Slide 56

Slide 56 text

www.innoq.com innoQ Deutschland GmbH Krischerstr. 100 40789 Monheim am Rhein Germany +49 2173 3366-0 Ohlauer Str. 43 10999 Berlin Germany +49 2173 3366-0 Ludwigstr. 180E 63067 Offenbach Germany +49 2173 3366-0 Kreuzstr. 16 80331 München Germany +49 2173 3366-0 innoQ Schweiz GmbH Gewerbestr. 11 CH-6330 Cham Switzerland +41 41 743 0116 That’s all I have.
 Thank you! Stefan Tilkov [email protected] @stilkov +49 170 471 2625

Slide 57

Slide 57 text

www.innoq.com OFFICES Monheim Berlin Offenbach Munich Zurich FACTS ~125 employees Privately owned Vendor-independent SERVICES Strategy & technology consulting Digital business models Software architecture & development Digital platforms & infrastructures Knowledge transfer, coaching & trainings CLIENTS Finance Telecommunications Logistics E-commerce Fortune 500 SMBs Startups