SATURN 2013 Governance and Education Session (notes)

Notes by Ian De Silva

Software Development Improvement Program: Enabling Software Excellence at a Hardware Company
Sascha Stoeter, ABB

ABB has historically been a hardware company, but it has been slowly increasing the amount of software development it does since the 80s. It is a distributed company (in 34+ countries) with software embedded into products such as controllers. Each team has its own set of tools to support development efforts.

SATURN 2013 Architectural Evaluation Session (notes)

Notes by Brendan Foote

All Architecture Evaluation Is Not the Same: Lessons Learned from More Than 50 Architecture Evaluations in Industry
Matthias Naab, Jens Knodel, and Thorsten Keuler, Fraunhofer IESE

Matthias has evaluated many systems’ architecture, ranging from tens of thousands of lines of code to tens of millions, and primarily in Java, C++ and C#. From this he distills out commonalities in the various stages of the evaluations. To start with, the initiator of the evaluation was either the development company or an outside company, such as a current customer or a potential one. The questions being asked also varied—whether wondering if the architecture is adequate for one’s solutions, what the impact would be of changing the system’s paradigm, or how big a difference there was between a system and the reference architecture.

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.

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.

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.

 

SEI Virtual Event: Architecting in a Complex World

Don’t let complexity defeat your system development effort. This SEI virtual event takes you in depth into three keys to succeed with system development in the midst of complexity.

Date: January 16, 2013
Time: 1:00 – 4:00 PM ET
Cost: Complimentary

Register now.

About the Event

Reflections on 20 Years of Software Architecture: A Presentation by Robert Schwanke

Here is the third in our series of blog posts at the SEI blog that provides lightly edited transcripts of remarks by SATURN 2012 panelists on the theme of “Reflections on 20 Years of Software Architecture.” The session was moderated by Rick Kazman of the SEI, and panelists were Linda Northrop of the SEI, Doug Schmidt of Vanderbilt University, Ian Gorton of Pacific Northwest National Lab, Robert Schwanke of Siemens Corporate Research, and Jeromy Carriere of X.commerce/eBay.

Read the third in the series, Reflections on 20 Years of Software Architecture: A Presentation by Robert Schwanke, who reflected on four general problems in software architecture: modularity, systems of systems, maintainable architecture descriptions, and system architecture.