Adam Bien's Weblog
Tuesday Dec 02, 2008
Your Architecture Starts To Be Sub-Optimal If:
- There are lot of experts involved, but no one is really excited.
- You are talking for more than one day about concepts and architectures, without a single Proof Of Concept or even discussing some code.
- You are just selling the features - without explaining the consequences.
- Your are starting with a multi-layer architecture without highlighting the "added value" of each layer and its individual responsibilities
- You are searching for the "silver bullet" architecture, with that all already known and even future requirements can be fulfilled.
- You are trying to identify hotspots and shortcomings in advance with ...UML.
- There is no clear vision defined - there is no clear relation between the vision and the resulting architecture.
- The is no secondary strategy - you have only one "master plan"
- You are thinking in pictures - not in code. You are believing, that pictures are more valuable, than code.
- The architect believes, that he can be smarter / have more experience than his whole development team.
Posted at 12:41PM Dec 02, 2008 by Adam Bien in Java EE 5 Architectures And Idioms | Kommentare[7]
[my tweets] 
Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices
Another awesome entry, Adam... I personally like the number 3 and 9.
thanks,
-talip
Gesendet von Talip Ozturk am December 02, 2008 at 05:35 PM CET #
LOL
That made my day.
It is sometimes refreshing to read the known truth.
THX
Thomas
Gesendet von Thomas am December 03, 2008 at 04:19 PM CET #
Thank you for these clear words :-)
Ciao Frank
Gesendet von Frank Caputo am December 03, 2008 at 04:31 PM CET #
Hi Adam,
I want to add some known topics:
11. You'll never achieve a long lasting systemarchitecture by just starting to code
12. If you're only allowing a certain degree of freedom only by refactoring, your managment/sponsor will "love" you
13. You'll never convience your (project) management by code.
Gesendet von Dirk am December 04, 2008 at 10:46 AM CET #
Dear Adam,
seems you lost at least one big fan with this post.
On the other hand you made some people feel good by sharing and publishing their thoughts.
Note to all whom it may concern:
One needs to accept that there is no "long lasting systemarchitecture" known prior to solving at least some of the problems.
Read "solving" as in getting your hands dirty while actually *doing* things, not talking.
One also need to accept that the developers do not need to "convince" someone, not even their own management.
Adam, I owe you a big cookie!
Really! :)
Cheers
Guido
Gesendet von Guido Goldstein am December 04, 2008 at 01:46 PM CET #
Dirk,
"11. You'll never achieve a long lasting systemarchitecture by just starting to code "
Absolutely not. But a few days (at most) for conceptual work should be enough. After that, you should start to code and proof the theory with spikes and POCs.
"12. If you're only allowing a certain degree of freedom only by refactoring, your managment/sponsor will "love" you"
This is true - clear decisions are important. But they should be backed by code, not slides.
"13. You'll never convience your (project) management by code."
This is true - I do it with slides either :). But I use the slides ONLY to convince the management and not to explain the architecture to the developers. Code (in my opinion) is always better suitable...
I have to talk to your management :-),
thanks for the interesting thoughts!,
adam
Gesendet von Adam Bien am December 08, 2008 at 04:50 PM CET #
Guido,
thank you - looking forward to the cookie. It wasn't my intention to offend someone with my posts - I use my blog just as notepad to keep my ideas in a central place.
cheers!,
adam
Gesendet von Adam Bien am December 08, 2008 at 04:54 PM CET #