architecture Archives - Airspeed Consulting

Microservices: When to Use Them

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Introduction

Microservices are all the rage these days. You’ve seen so many blog posts, technical articles, even job postings calling for microservices experience. So it must be the new way to architect applications, right?

Well, as with everything else in software architecture, it depends. It depends on the context you are dealing with. It depends whether the benefits of microservices outweigh their drawbacks for your situation.

In this post I’ll describe what microservices are, why they’re so good, and what their drawbacks are. I’ll finish off by giving you some guidelines to help you decide whether microservices are right for your situation.

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Software Product Teams are Better Than Project Teams

by Brian Schalme

When it comes to software development, product teams are better than project teams. I’ll explain why.

Seen This Before?

Have you noticed a pattern that most organizations use to build software? They assign a project manager to prepare the project charter that broadly defines the scope, cost and schedule. Senior management approves the charter, and then they assemble a team. Developers, analysts, QA testers join the new team even though they may be winding up other projects. Management assigns an architect. They might also assign a DBA, network and middleware experts on a part-time basis.

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Become a Great Software Architect by Being a Great Communicator

by Brian Schalme

Software architects are responsible for the technical solution to ensure it achieves the desired business outcomes. To do so requires broad technical and business knowledge with a deeper understanding in a couple technical areas. It requires being able to see the big picture. It requires the wisdom to evaluate different solutions to the problem. But most of all it requires really good communication skills to convey the solution. You can become a great software architect by being a great communicator.

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A Target or a Radar For Your Architecture?

by Brian Schalme

Should you use a target architecture or an architecture radar for your organization? In this post I’ll explain what each one is. I’ll then highlight the differences between them. Finally, I’ll provide my opinion on which one is better and why I think so.

Many organizations, once they get to a certain size, see the need to decide on a particular technology stack. And rightfully so, because a proliferation of various competing technologies leads leads to an organisational drain. IT people need to become conversant and in most cases proficient at JBoss, WebSphere, and WebLogic if all three of these application servers are used. It means the organization ends up going “wide and shallow” across these three instead of “narrow and deep” on just one. In other words, they don’t develop a deep level of expertise on one application server, making problems harder to solve.

Note that this applies to programming languages, databases, application frameworks, and the key libraries an organization uses. It can also apply to server operating systems, routers and other network infrastructure, firewalls, etc.

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