Software Architects Group

Items relevant to the Northern Colorado Software Architects Group

New York City, Here I Come!!

I’m delighted to reveal that I’ve been accepted to speak at the International Association of Software Architects (IASA) IT Architecture Conference (ITARC) in New York City, September 22-24th. I’ll be speaking on effective architecture refactoring… or, in other words, telling people about the mistakes I made, in the hopes that they won’t have to repeat them. For those in NYC, this is well worth attending. The keynotes will be delivered by some people you may have heard of: John Zachman, Scott Ambler, ...
Posted On Monday, July 12, 2010 8:45 PM | Comments (0)

Architectural Refactoring… Why Now?

You’ll notice for the next little while, I’m going to be talking about architectural refactoring. These posts will be a reflection on the past couple years as a software architect, specifically centered around what some people call “brownfield” development. That is, taking something that is in a less than ideal state, and improving it… not starting from scratch as in new (or “greenfield”) development. Leaving aside philosophical discussions about whether all software development is “brownfield” or ...
Posted On Monday, July 12, 2010 8:23 PM | Comments (1)

Architectural “Refactoring” – Part 1 of N

I’m in a bit of an odd position, in some ways. CCI brought me on as a “software architect” a little over two years ago. That role wasn’t really defined – in fact, I got to spend several months doing what I felt would be a good use of my time, and then I wrote my own job description. (Perhaps that’s not exactly what other people remember, but it’s sure how things felt to me.) Like anything, this approach has benefits and drawbacks. On the plus side, I was empowered to go where the smoke was – to find ...
Posted On Monday, July 12, 2010 8:13 PM | Comments (0)

New Software Architects group formed in Fort Collins

Wow. Seems like I have lots of catching up to do as far as motion on the architect community. In February, the International Association of Software Architects stood up a Denver chapter, with Paul Rayner as president. In a nutshell, IASA wants to be for software what the AMA is to medicine. They've got some great ideas, and some big challenges ahead -- but that's the topic of another post. Four of us from the Fort Collins area (Kathleen Dollard, Mark Sigda, Peggy Collins and myself) attended the ...
Posted On Monday, October 20, 2008 1:10 PM | Comments (2)

What is an architect anyways?

Jeremy Miller pointed out the corollary to my comment that "good developers move to good companies." In order to attract good people, become a good company. What that company looks like is a matter of debate. It would be rather an interesting debate, too -- a true insight into what developers, on the whole value in a company. As with many other interesting discussions, there will be a set of answers that is as varied as the people themselves. Personally, at this point in time, I'd take a quick stab ...
Posted On Monday, April 21, 2008 2:51 AM | Comments (1)