Survey on architecture decision making

Philips Research and Embedded System Institute (ESI) in the Netherlands have launched this survey of system architects and managers to understand architecture decision making.

From the trenches: Communicating the value of architecting within agile development

Deciding not to architect is an architectural decision. Postponing key architectural decisions while focusing on iteration-at-a-time development and customer-visible features negatively affects the success of large-scale projects. On the other hand, indulging in analysis paralysis in search of the best architecture that will sustain the system for its entire lifespan has the same effect.

Talking Architects with Len Bass

Video of Len Bass discussing quality attributes here.

Architecture certification, the coming wave

Certification programs for software architects abound. How can you tell which programs best measure an architect’s capabilities? Or which ones are right for you? SATURN 2010 plans a track on architecture certification to pull together details on certification programs.

Want to make big money in a low-stress job? Be a software architect

…says CNN/Money.com.

In the CNN/Money list of top-paying jobs, software architect ranked No. 8. Likewise in the list of least stressful jobs.

Another usability/software architecture link

For those interested in the relation between usability and software architecture, my colleague in this work–Bonnie John of the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University–gave a talk a while ago at Stanford on the work. You can see her talk on YouTube:

Usability and Software Architecture: The Forgotten Problems

- Len Bass, SEI

SEI Webinar Series: Cloud Computing by Grace Lewis

“The push to promote cloud computing is part of the Obama administration’s effort to modernize the government information technology systems,” according to a September 15, 2009 New York Times article highlighting the unveiling of Apps.Gov, a virtual storefront run by the General Services Administration where federal agencies will be able to purchase cloud computing applications and services such as productivity software, storage, and web hosting.

Jim Highsmith to Keynote at SATURN 2010

We’re excited to announce that acclaimed author and leader of the Agile movement Jim Highsmith will be a keynote speaker for the SEI Architecture Technology User Network Conference (SATURN 2010), May 17 – 21, 2010 in Minneapolis, Minn.

Computer Science at Internet Scale

This article in the New York Times discusses a strictly computer-science aspect of ultra-large-scale systems.

Developmental qualities

The community has done a good job in describing and understanding techniques for achieving operational qualities. Performance, availability, security, and usability have been well studied from the point of view of definitions and techniques to achieve them.