SATURN 2013 Program Highlights from Conference Program Chairs

As program chairs for SATURN 2013, we would like to provide you an overview of the presentation program (note: information about keynotes by Stephan Murer, Scott Berkun, and Mary Poppendieck, the invited talk by Philippe Kruchten, and tutorial highlights is already available in other blog posts).

We received many high quality submissions covering the topics of front-end architecture, back-end architecture, methods and tools, and technical leadership. In total we got contributions from more than 40 companies and organizations across three continents.

On Wednesday morning you have the tough choice to decide between three great sessions. For example, Harald Wesenberg from Statoil speaks about architecting for the long term in Session 1. In Session 2, Chris Armstrong presents ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 in action, while Session 3 deals with agile practices at scale.

Learn and Practice Architectural Coaching at SATURN

In Felix Bachmann’s tutorial at SATURN 2013 on Monday, April 29 titled Architectural Coaching, you will learn the essentials of how to successfully coach an architecture team in designing a software system that fulfills what the stakeholders want within the given constraints, such as budget and time.

You will learn about the importance of a product vision, the architecting process, and the soft skills required to lead a successful team.

In group exercises, you will work with a team to produce the product vision, which gives the team direction and motivation.

Introduction to the Architecture Analysis and Description Language (AADL)

When a system fails, engineers too often focus on the physical components, but pay scant attention to the software. In software-reliant systems ignoring or deemphasizing the importance of software failures can be a recipe for disaster. This blog post at the SEI Blog is the first in a series on recent developments with the Architecture Analysis Design Language (AADL) standard. First published in 2004 by SAE International, AADL is a modeling notation that employs both a textual and graphical representation. AADL provides modeling concepts to describe the runtime architecture of application systems in terms of concurrent tasks, their interactions, and their mapping onto an execution platform. Development organizations use AADL to conduct lightweight, rigorous, yet comparatively inexpensive analyses of critical real-time factors such as performance, dependability, security, and data integrity. Use of AADL helps alleviate mismatched assumptions between the hardware, software, and their interactions that can lead to system failures.

This podcast, an interview with Julien Delange and Peter Feiler of the SEI, covers the latest developments in AADL.

SATURN 2013 Super-Early-Bird Registration Expires March 10

If you are a practicing or aspiring software architect, the SEI Software Architecture Technology User Network (SATURN) 2013 Conference offers courses, presentations, tutorials, and talks providing technical advice and knowledge around four architectural themes:

• Front-end architectures: impact of living on the edge
• Back-end architectures and application hosting: go to the cloud or stay on the ground?
• Methods and tools: go with the flow or go your own way?
• Technical leadership: hard skills and soft skills

SATURN 2013 will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 29 through May 3, 2013. Register for the SATURN software architecture conference before March 10 at  to save $300 off the regular registration fee.

SATURN will feature thought-provoking and inspiring keynote and invited talks from leaders in the fields of software architecture and software development:

• Stephan Murer, Credit Suisse: 15 Years of SOA at Credit Suisse: Lessons Learned and Remaining Challenges
• Scott Berkun, author and frequent contributor at publications including Harvard Business Review and Business Week: WordPress.com and the Future of Work
• Mary Poppendieck, author and expert on Lean development: Learning to Surf
• Philippe Kruchten, leader and innovator in the field of software architecture for 35 years: Games Architects Play: On Reasoning Fallacies, Cognitive Biases, and Politics

Discounted SEI Courses Offered at SATURN 2013

Attendees at SATURN 2013 will have the opportunity to take two popular two-day SEI training courses, Software Architecture Design and Analysis and Advanced Topics in Service-Oriented Architecture, at $500 off the regular course-registration fee. These two-day courses are offered on April 29 and 30, 2013.

SEI Virtual Tutorial, Feb. 27 (Part 1): Architecture & Design of Service-Oriented Systems

Date: February 27, 2013 (Part 1)
Time: 1:30 – 3:00 PM ET
Cost: None

Register now.

About the Tutorial

SOA is not an architecture. SOA is not a system. SOA is a way of designing systems, an approach to system development, an architectural style, a design paradigm.  As an architectural style, SOA can be described in terms of components and connectors. The main components are the services, service consumers, and SOA infrastructure. The connectors are predominantly message-based document exchanges. In essence, SOA is an architectural style and an approach to software development that goes with the style. You do not “build a SOA,” you “build a service-oriented system.”

Press Release: ACM Distinguished Paper to be Awarded for Best Contribution of QoSA 2013 Conference

QoSA is the premier forum for the presentation of new results in the area of software architecture quality. It brings together researchers, practitioners and students who are concerned with software architecture quality in a holistic way. As a working conference QoSA has a strong practical bias, encompassing research papers, industrial reports and invited talks from renowned speakers.

The best contribution of the conference will receive the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award.   To learn more, see the full press release about QoSA and the award.

Mary Poppendieck, Expert on Lean Software Development, Will Keynote SATURN 2013

Mary Poppendieck, award-winning author and expert on Lean software development, will deliver a keynote address at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute’s annual software architecture conference. The SEI Architecture Technology User Network (SATURN) 2013 Conference, which will be held April 29 through May 3, 2013, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, will feature three keynote addresses by leaders in the field of software architecture.

Here is a press release announcing Mary Poppendieck’s keynote address at SATURN.

 

Call for Papers: 5th International Workshop on Principles of Engineering Service-Oriented Systems

Important Dates

Paper Submission: February 7, 2013
Acceptance Notification: February 28, 2013
Camera-Ready Copy: March 7, 2013

Background

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and service-oriented systems, which are built using the SOA paradigm, are now in the stage of widespread adoption, at least according to Gartner’s Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies. Due to the fact that some of the standards for service integration have stabilized, and driven by IT cost savings, organizations are starting to incorporate external software services into their systems, some of which are hosted in the cloud. From a provider perspective, many commercial companies such as Oracle, SAP, Intuit, and Netflix either have cloud-based offerings of their products or run their business completely in the cloud.

The special theme of the 5th edition of the PESOS workshop is “Service Engineering for the Cloud.” Cloud Computing is shaping the way that organizations acquire and use systems — software-as-a-service (SaaS) model — and how they develop and deploy systems — platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) models. Even though cloud platforms and infrastructures are typically designed to scale on demand, the question is whether this automatic elasticity translates to all services deployed on them.

“Model-Based Engineering with AADL” Selected for Intel Recommended Reading List

To help developers make the most of the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL), two SEI researchers published Model-Based Engineering with AADL (Addison-Wesley Professional 2012), about which we blogged here in October.

The book has been selected for Intel Corporation’s Recommended Reading List for the first half of 2013.

Intel says

Our Recommended Reading Program provides technical professionals a simple and handy reference list of what to read to stay abreast of new technologies. Dozens of industry technologists, corporate fellows, and engineers have helped by suggesting books and reviewing the list. This is the most comprehensive reading list available for professional computer Developers.