software Archives - Airspeed Consulting

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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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.

Software Product Teams are Better Than Project Teams

Seen This Before?

A Target or a Radar For Your Architecture?