Chapter 4. Communication Is King; Clarity and Leadership, Its Humble Servants
Mark Richards is a director and senior solutions architect at Collaborative Consulting, LLC, where he is involved in the architecture and design of large-scale service-oriented architectures in J2EE and other technologies, primarily in the financial services industry. He has been involved in the software industry since 1984, and has significant experience in J2EE architecture and development, object-oriented design and development, and systems integration.

ALL TOO OFTEN, SOFTWARE ARCHITECTS sit in their ivory towers, dictating specifications, technology decisions, and technology direction to the developers below. More often than not, this leads to dissension in the ranks, quickly followed by a revolt by the masses, finally resulting in a software product that doesn't even come close to resembling the original requirements. Every software architect should know how to communicate the goals and objectives of a software project. The key to effective communication is clarity and leadership.
Clarity describes how you communicate. No one on your team is going to read a 100-page architecture decisions document. Being clear and concise in the way you communicate your ideas is vital to the success of any software project. Keep things as simple as possible at the start of a project, and by all means do ...
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