George Fairbanks of Rhino Research to Serve as SATURN 2012 Program Chair

I am pleased to announce that George Fairbanks of Rhino Research will serve as our SATURN 2012 program chair. SATURN 2012 will be held in St. Petersburg, Fl. May 7-11, 2012 in collaboration with IEEE Software magazine. We are accepting abstract submissions for presentations and tutorials between now and November 30.

George Fairbanks is the author of Just Enough Software Architecture. We are delighted to have George’s help in shaping a high-quality technical program for SATURN 2012.

- Bill Pollak, SEI

Submitting an Abstract for SATURN 2012

I hope you have read our recent post about the 2012 SATURN Conference and its focus on architecture as a catalyst for collaboration.  If you are considering submitting an abstract for this year’s conference (May 7-11, St. Petersburg, Fl.), the tips for doing so that we posted here from our SATURN 2011 Conference Chair Nanette Brown may be helpful to you. I am reposting them here:

Whether you’re an old hand at presenting or a first-timer looking to get started, creating an abstract for submission can seem like a daunting prospect.

Here are a few tips I hope will help:

1. Begin with the end in mind – This quotation from Stephen Covey is applicable to many things in life, including writing a conference abstract. Have a clear idea of the learning objectives you want attendees to achieve and work backwards from there.
2. Know your audience – SATURN, for example, is a practitioner’s conference so applicability to real-world technologies and architectural challenges is key.
3. Keep it simple – It can be tempting to condense your entire presentation into the submission but remember that it is an abstract. It’s worth the effort to distill the key concepts and solutions that you’re trying to convey. It will help you clarify your own thoughts as well as indicate to the selection committee your ability to deliver a crisp and cogent presentation.
4. Communicate your unique perspective and knowledge base – Whether you’re submitting an experience report or a more conceptual discussion of methods and practices, make sure to communicate what makes your perspective particularly compelling and noteworthy.

It does take effort to create a high-quality abstract but the opportunity to share your ideas and get feedback from members of the architectural community will definitely make it all worthwhile. I look forward to reading your proposals.

- Nanette Brown

Architecture-Centric Engineering in the Financial Industry, Part Two

Last week, we posted a link here to an article at the SEI blog about how Bursatec, the technology arm of Groupo Bolsa Mexicana de Valores (BMV, the Mexican Stock Exchange), used architecture-centric engineering to respond to its challenges.

Part two of this article was posted today: Using Team Software Process (TSP) to Architect a New Trading System, by James McHale.

SATURN 2012 – Architecture: Catalyst for Collaboration

Here at the SEI, we are excited to be planning for SATURN 2012, which we will hold in St. Petersburg, Florida on May 7-11, 2012. SATURN has grown in attendance, influence, and stature every year since its inception in 2005 as a small gathering of practitioners and SEI technical staff members. With another successful conference last year in San Mateo, California, SATURN is now a truly international conference with prestigious keynote speakers and a technical program that has become more ambitious in scope and engaging in content each year.

Along with the SEI SATURN Technical Committee–Ipek Ozkaya, Robert Nord, John Klein, and Soumya Simanta–I’m happy to announce the theme we have chosen for SATURN 2012 and invite you, our SATURN blog readers, to consider being a part of the SATURN technical program by submitting an abstract for a presentation or tutorial. Entering the third year of our mutually beneficial collaboration with IEEE Software magazine, we again offer to SATURN presenters the possibility that a paper based on their presentations will be featured in a future issue of IEEE Software. Papers from presentations at SATURN 2011 will be published in forthcoming issues this year.

As projects continue to grow in scale and complexity, effective collaboration across geographical, cultural, and technical boundaries is increasingly prevalent and essential to system success. SATURN 2012 will explore the theme of “Architecture: Catalyst for Collaboration.” We will include presentations, courses, and tutorials on

• collaboration in software development; for example, architecture in an Agile project
• collaboration in the context of mobile computing, cloud computing, social networking, open frameworks, and service-oriented architecture
• knowledge management for effective collaboration
• systems of systems and ultra-large-scale systems: how to achieve collaboration across independently funded and managed organizations
• multi-agent systems and collaboration among non-human entities such as software and networks
• collaborative design and architecture tools

Case Study: Architecture-Centric Engineering in Financial Industry

Bursatec, the technology arm of Groupo Bolsa Mexicana de Valores (BMV, the Mexican Stock Exchange), recently embarked on a project to replace three existing trading engines with one system developed in house. Given the competitiveness of global financial markets and recent interest in Latin American economies, Bursatec needed a reliable and fast new system that could work ceaselessly throughout the day and handle sharp fluctuations in trading volume. To meet these demands, the SEI suggested combining elements of its Architecture Centric Engineering (ACE) method, which requires effective use of software architecture to guide system development, with its Team Software Process (TSP), which teaches software developers the skills they need to make and track plans and produce high-quality products. This post at the SEI blog by Felix Bachmann—the first in a two-part series—provides a case study of how Bursatec used architecture-centric engineering to respond to its challenges.