U.S. Army Group to Discuss Software Acquisition at SATURN 2010

The Army Strategic Software Improvement Program (ASSIP)’s bi-monthly ASSIP Action Group (AAG) meeting will be co-located at SATURN 2010.

ASSIP was created in 2003 and is dedicated to improving the acquisition of software-reliant systems. The AAG was chartered to help plan, coordinate, manage, and execute software acquisition improvement activities, and the meeting at SATURN 2010 will be a meeting of all program executive office (PEO) chief software architects (or their representatives) and representatives of the Army’s software engineering centers.

Full article here.

Link Roundup: March 15, 2010

Good morning all,

Welcome to our March 15 link roundup. Here are some notable posts and pages from other software engineering blogs and websites that you may have missed:

The cost of “SOA-fication”, by Nick Malik at Inside Architecture. Nick examines the myth that SOA is an inherently expensive endeavor.

Architecture Refuseniks, by Peter Cripps at Software Architecture Zen. Peter provides a definition of a particularly pessimistic type of co-worker.

A Simple Hint why SaaS is Better, by Phil Wainewright at The Connected Web. Did you know that if you write “find attached” in a Gmail message, and hit “Send” without attaching a file, Gmail will ask if you meant to attach a file? Phil’s encounter with this Gmail feature prompted a fascinating post on the capabilities of software as a service.

Microsoft is “All In” with the Cloud. Let’s Talk Winners and Losers, by Glenn Weinstein at Appirio. Glenn looks at potential winners and losers in Microsoft’s new direction for cloud computing.

Evolving Architectures – Part II but Design is Emergent, by Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz at his own blog. Arnon talks about test-driven development and design.

And from the SEI website, we have a presentation by Len Bass about designing software architecture to meet business goals, and information about the second keynote speaker at SATURN 2010: Wayne Longcore, Chief Architect for Consumers Energy.

From the Trenches: Hard Choices Game

In January, Ipek Ozkaya, Nanette Brown, Robert Nord, Philippe Kruchten and I spent a few days together at the SEI in Pittsburgh, PA to brainstorm and develop a game to teach the concepts surrounding technical debt. As a starting point, we participated in Chris Sims’ Creating Agile Learning Games workshop to learn about the elements involved in game design. There, we came across the “Short Cut” game by Quality Tree Software Inc., which we found contained a lot of the basic elements that we wanted to use to communicate about technical debt. As good software engineers would do, we adapted, evolved, and improved on the “Short Cut” game to give birth to our own board game, “Hard Choices.”

The purpose of Hard Choices is to help players recognize, develop, and learn strategies for managing uncertainty, risk, options, and technical debt. Each player’s goal is to finish the game

SATURN 2010 Technical Program

This week I have in my to-do list writing a blog post about the SATURN 2010 program as the technical chair. You have the benefit of the program laid out for you at the SATURN conference page, far better than I can do here. So instead, I will reflect on the process of putting together the program for SATURN from my perspective and why I am excited about it.

Link Roundup: March 1, 2010

Good morning all,

Welcome to our March 1 Link Roundup. Here are some notable posts from other software engineering blogs that you may have missed:

Version Control Tools, by Martin Fowler on his personal blog. Martin compares various version control tools and calls out some truly terrible ones.

IT Training and Justification, by Dan Douglas at IT is Possible. Dan provides a great case for the value of ongoing training for IT professionals.

The Extensibility Syndrome, by Michael Stal at Hitchhiker’s Guide to Software Architecture and Everything Else. Michael’s discussion of extensible design provides a look at change throughout the development cycle.

The SOA Paradox: Rejecting the Architecture, Embracing the Concepts, by Loraine Lawson at ITBusinessEdge. Loraine gives evidence that service orientation (if not service-oriented architecture) is the wave of the future.

Agile Security Engineering, by J.D. Meier on his personal blog. J.D. summarizes his talk from the Microsoft 2010 MVP Summit, where he covered Agile security engineering.

What does the brand of “Enterprise Architect” stand for? by Nick Malik at Inside Architecture. Nick muses on the meaning of enterprise architect as a brand.