January 2007 - Posts
I work for Microsoft. However, I wonder if the answer to deciding if a developer is 'qualified' wouldn't be better decided outside these hallowed halls. Specifically, should software development be self-regulating, like Doctors and Attorneys are? This
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In think that one of the most valuable traits of an enterprise architect is the ability to push gently. In other words, if you find that a team is developing a solution that cannot be integrated or creates an entirely new definition for the word, customer,
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Next week, I'm interviewing another architect, so I've gone over my list of "things to ask an architect candidate" for another time to see if I'd change anything. Not much popped out, but I thought I'd share some exercises that I ask architecture candidates
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An old saying goes: on their death bed, no one ever turns to their family and says "I wish I had spent more time at work." I'm not waiting that long. In my life, two experiences combined, and I'm watching them play out. First: last May, my father became
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If you find yourself in the unenviable position of having to prove to someone that your project is being managed correctly, look to your 'platform goals'. Don't have 'platform goals?' Don't know what they are? You are not alone. Platform goals are the
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Joshua and Frank were having a chat over coffee the other day. Well, Frank was having a chat. Joshua was mostly listening. "That guy Alexei is driving me completely nuts! If he wasn't so darn smart, I'd just ignore him, but I can't. The business loves
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Christopher Koch at CIO magazine, as part of the research for their annual "state of the CIO" survey, did some number crunching about whether businesses benefit by having their CIO report to the CFO or directly to the CEO. Excellent Work! "I've been crunching
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When you pass a message from one system to another, you have to decide: do I want the message to pass quickly, or do I want to be certain that the message gets there? But what does that do to decoupling? Here's a specific case. Take a look at the decisions
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Are you ready to answer this challenge... can you prove that your Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is NOT JABOWS? I'm not asking from the standpoint of technology (are services secure, available, composable, etc) but rather from the business. In other
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Thought occurred to me when reading Brad Adam's blog that the names we give services need to be as well thought out as the names used in APIs. I've made attempts at this topic before, of course, but I'm wondering if it may be easier just to leverage the
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I am convinced that Test-Driven Development is the single greatest hope that our industry has, as a whole, for improving the development and design of useful, practical, low-defect applications, and I find it frustrating that, in some places, it has taken
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