SATURN 2012 Awards Conferred

Since 2010, the SEI and IEEE have been conferring two attendee-selected awards at SATURN. The IEEE Software SATURN Architecture in Practice Presentation Award is given to the presentation that best describes experiences, methods, and lessons learned from the implementation of architecture-centric practices. Anthony Tsakiris of Ford Motor Company and Jeromy Carriere of eBay, Inc. received this award in 2010 and 2011 respectively.  This year’s award winner was Michael Keeling of Vivisimo for his presentation titled Creating An Architecture Oral History: Minimalist Techniques for Describing Systems.

SATURN 2012 Keynote: Andy Hunt, Agility and Your Wetware: How to Get Uncomfortable with Agile and Jumpstart Your Creativity

Agility and Your Wetware: How to Get Uncomfortable with Agile and Jumpstart Your Creativity
Andy Hunt, Toolshed Technologies

Looking back at Agile Manifesto.

Really hard problems have nothing to do with hard science. Real hard problems is that it’s us writing, or managing the people who write, code. The problem is that it is us. If we’re problem, what can we do to fix it?

by Andy Hunt, Toolshed Technologies

SATURN 2012 IEEE Software Plenary Talk: Frances Paulisch, Standardizing Speed and Security for Software-Based Systems

Standardizing Speed and Security for Software-Based Systems
Frances Paulisch, Siemens Corporate Technology

Common thematic trend at SATURN: people and culture. Change from command and control to more empowerment, autonomy, enabling people to make decentralized decisions. Conveying vision so people can make decisions in the right way is a more motivating way to work together.

Software initiative at Siemens will take on more of a governance role. Siemens has issues with embedded-system complexity. Software is not subject to law of physics. There are more interfaces with potential threats as well as benefits. As software interconnects with everything, that poses more threats, and there are more threats out there in the cyber world.

SATURN 2012 Plenary Talk: Hans Gyllstrom, Architecture-Based Transformation of a Large Enterprise

Architecture-Based Transformation of a Large Enterprise
Hans Gyllstrom, Enterprise Design Group

This talk presented observations and insights gleaned from leading transformations to a better state over the past 10 years or more.

Case study of transformation of a large Australian bank. CEO wanted to be able to say: I’ll never buy another data center, rack, server, storage, or network device; never get locked into proprietary hardware; tell teams it will be weeks to get them new hardware; pay up-front for infrastructure that may not be used; implement internal solutions for common problems when an equivalent commodity cloud solution is available. Implemented an IT agile operating model.

Transformation: from current state to target state via a migration path involving numerous intermediate state.

Architecture comprises decisions on structure. Period.

SATURN 2012 Keynote: Michael Stal, Win-Win With Agile Architecture

Win-Win with Agile Architecture
Michael Stal, Siemens Corporate Research

This keynote covered software architecture and how it can be combined with Agile in systematic way; perspectives on agility and architecture.

“Experts solve problems, geniuses avoid them” (Einstein). Architects should be geniuses.

Architecture and design are two sides of the coin. If you knew everything in advance, you could design the best architecture. Waterfall would be a perfect fit.  But the real world is not perfect.

The other side of the coin is represented by the Agile Manifesto. In software architecture, embracing change is important. However, change should be planned.