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Why is Software Design Difficult?

SATURN 2015 Highlights

Three Big Ideas for Beating Innovator's Block

Managing Multiple Ruby Versions with uru on Windows

Introduction to Microserivces

Communicating Design Intent by Sharing the Paths not Taken

Agile Software Architecture (with George Fairbanks)

Architecture Haiku

Dante can be Agile too

The Case for Minimalism in Software Architecture

Defect-Driven Process Improvement

Dealing with Constraints in Software Architecture Design

Architectural Drivers: Building Blocks for Decision Making

Five Challenges for a Maturing Discipline

I'm Going to SATURN 2014 and you should too!

Formal Models: I Hate You, I Love You

Rapid Software Architecture Exploration

Overcoming Team Dysfunctions: From Storming to Awesome

Boxing the Infinite Design Space

Play Telephone with your Architecture Description

High Ceremony Software Architecture Kills Collaboration

Reflection on Past Essays and the Path Forward

See you at the Affordance-Driven Process Improvement Workshop at Agile2012

Scarce Resources: The Hidden Architectural Driver

If you aren't Agile… Then what are you?

Postmodern Software Architecture

Guidelines for the System Metaphor

See you at Agile2011 in Salt Lake City!

Change Your Team's Oil

Why I Pledge an Oath on Non-Allegiance

Exploring the Design Space

Choosing a Software Design Strategy

Improvisational Architecture

Hacking is not a Dirty Word

Lightweight Experiments for Process Improvement

Lessons from a Software Engineering Dojo

See you at XP2010 in Trondheim, Norway!

The Reality of Risk Exposure

A Closer Look at Risk Burndown

Is Better the Enemy of Good Enough?

Book Review: The Design of Design by Fred Brooks

Carpool Musings on Women in Science and Engineering

Identifying Process Affordances: Nudging Toward Change

Getting Started with Version Control

SWOT vs. Risk Management

Why don't you use Continuous Integration?

Threshold of Success

2010: The Year I Make Contact

The Domestication of Formal Methods

Groupthink Kills Big Ideas

Exploring Archetypes of Architects

Tracking Bugs Better

Project Signaling

Binary is a Metric Too

Software Craftsmanship: Engineering by Coincidence

Relationships Matter

Kenny Rogers' Guide to Software Process Improvement

Software Engineering: Art or Engineering?

Securing the Internet

Process Affordances: Ignore at your own Peril

Applying Leadership StylesThoughts on Formal Methods in Software Engineering

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Architecture Haiku

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The most effective way to transfer complex, abstract ideas from one person’s brain to another person’s brain is by writing the ideas down. This premise permeates our whole approach to software design.  Entire books are dedicated to creating better documentation!  Following traditional documentation advice inevitably leads to comprehensive, albeit verbose, documents filled with important details that, sadly, too few stakeholders read.  There must be a better way. Introducing the Architecture Haiku George Fairbanks  originally came up with the idea of the Architecture Haiku as "a one-page, quick-to-build, uber-terse design description."  With only one page of paper (assumed standard, A4) to work with there is no space to be indecisive or indirect.  There might not even be room for diagrams - which at first sounds crazy, but perhaps is crazy brilliant!  We tried this idea on my team and it turned out to be a great, lightweight method for writing down and sharing architectur
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Dealing with Constraints in Software Architecture Design

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Definition  of  constraint  (n) Bing Dictionary con·straint     [ kən stráynt ]     limiting factor: something that limits freedom of action state of restriction: a state in which freedom of action is severely restricted lack of spontaneity: a lack of warmth and spontaneity in somebody's manner or in the atmosphere on a particular occasion In software architecture design, constraints come in two basic flavors - technical and business.  On most projects there are only a handful of constraints, but these constraints are a highly influential architectural driver .  Constraints, as the dictionary definition above indicates, are a limiting factor and severely restrict options for making design decisions.  They are also fixed design decisions that cannot be changed and must be satisfied.  You could think of constraints as the ultimate non-negotiable, "must have" requirement.  It is for this reason that architecture design constraints must be created and acc
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Managing Multiple Ruby Versions with uru on Windows

My undergraduate software engineering professor was awesome . Here's one bit of advice he shared during his course that really stuck with me over the years. Pick a scripting language.  Any Scripting Language.  Learn to use it really, really well. Compiled programming languages obviously have a purpose, but lightweight, interpreted scripting languages are an important tool as well. An interpreted scripting language is the perfect choice for one off tests, tedious text manipulation, automated tasks, and simple tools. Scripts are easy to write, easy to share, and good enough to get the job done. My prof used Perl and was a whiz at it. I eventually settled on Ruby as my scripting language of choice. While the core language works really well across different platforms, as a predominantly Windows user,  I find that Ruby sometimes runs into problems in odd situations. One thing that is particularly annoying is the lack of a Ruby version manager. Version managers are a great idea
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