I listen to a lot of interesting music, so picked out my six favorite new-to-me albums this year. I hope you find something interesting to groove to in there.
Andrew finishes his article on how to scale software architecture by looking at how this technique works in practice, and also outlines how things can go wrong.
Brandon finishes his article on how we should look at integration by arguing that it is a strategic element of an enterprise's infrastructure. You can buy the best products in the world but "none of it will make you competitive in a digital world if you continue to treat integration as a tactical nuisance to overcome so you take advantage of those new systems."
more… https://martinfowler.com/articles/cant-buy-integration.html#TreatIntegrationAsStrategicToYourBus
Andrew's fourth supporting element for the Advice Process is using a tech radar to capture and map out your local version of the technology trends you see across your organization.
Having architectural principles is not new, but in a world of highly-autonomous-teams they become essential because they are the means by which an aligned delivery direction is achieved without the need for control. In the latest installment, Andrew talks about what makes a good principle, and how they work with the Advice Process.
Thus far, Brandon has has explained why general purpose languages are better for integration. In this latest installment he explains that there are cases when commercial integration tools make sense
Many commercial integration tools market their ability to own the integration landscape and call out to general purpose languages as needed. While I can appreciate the marketing behind such messaging — it promotes product penetration and lock-in — as architectural guidance, it is exactly backwards. Instead, we should almost always manage the interface evolution in a general purpose language for at least two reasons: so we can better manage the
While we have historically drawn up our project plans and costs around the boxes—the digital products we are introducing—the lines are the hidden and often primary driver of organizational tech debt. They are the reason that things just take longer now than they used to.
The Advice Process works when supported by four elements. Andrew describes the first of these, Decision Records, which act as a tool for thinking about and recording the decision process.
Like many modern software architects, Andrew Harmel-Law struggles with the need to scale architectural thinking to larger organizations while allowing teams to be as autonomous as possible. The approach he's currently using is the "Advice Process", that encourages and supports these teams to be engaged in broader architectural decision making. In this first installment, Andrew describes this advice process, later installments will dig into four supporting e