Thinking Architecturally

Preface

Rich Hickey once said programmers know the benefits of everything and the tradeoffs of nothing…an approach that can lead a project down a path of frustrated developers and unhappy customers. But as an architect you must consider the tradeoffs of every new library, language, pattern, or approach and quickly make decisions often with incomplete information. How should you think about the inevitable technology choices you have to make on a project? How do you balance competing agendas? How do you keep your team happy and excited without chasing every new technology trend?

As an architect it is your responsibility to effectively guide your teams on their technology journey. In the following report, you will follow the arc from discovering a new technology through to maintaining technologies in your organization. You will learn the importance of tradeoffs, how you can analyze new technologies, and how you can effectively capture the inevitable architectural decisions you will make. You will also explore the value of fitness functions as a way to ensure the choices you make are actually reflected in the code base.

Before you read any further, I want to clarify a point about titles. In the software industry, titles aren’t very well defined. Ask 20 developers to define architect and you will get at least 20 different answers. There are more than a few organizations that proudly say they don’t have architects! Additionally, the title of “architect” can be closely guarded in some ...