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Architecture and OO Design (RSS)
Let’s say that you have two systems: Adipose and BellyFat. They both need the same information. Adipose handles customer transactions, so it needs information about customers. BellyFat handles the long-term management of customer information, like what
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Some methodologies of software architecture, including EWITA , attempt to describe architectural processes in a manner that is quite separate from the development of software. Is that valid? To whit, the first step in the EWITA process is described
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For most of the last decade, we’ve seen a steady growth in the use of a simple “recommended practice” in the world of software architecture. Well known by it’s designation, IEEE-1471 is officially titled “ Recommended Practice for Architectural
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Sometimes I hear a complaint from an IT architect who wants to have direct conversations with “the business” or “the customer” but, for some reason (usually bureaucratic), they cannot. There is a team of analysts or project managers that they are
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As many of you may know, Microsoft has a vocal and thriving Agile Software Development community. Recently, on our community forum, a question appeared about the ability of Agile development to “scale” to a large team. In other words, if we
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The dark cloud of the economic downturn has produced a silver lining within Microsoft IT: an increased emphasis on Agile development techniques. This does not mean that MS IT is new to using Agile. Far from it. Agile development practices
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Well, it is February 2nd, and today, the Open Group is announcing the general availability of TOGAF version 9.0 . For those of you not familiar with TOGAF, it is an ambitious and maturing Enterprise Architecture Framework created by the members
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Sometimes, when something new comes along, the best way to see it being useful is to see it being used . Think about it. If I went back to 1960 and visited a family somewhere in the midwest of the USA, and explained a "computer chip" to them, would they
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Of all the ‘laws of software’ that I subscribe to, this one is one of the most fundamental, and unwavering. I cannot find an exception to it, and years of experience reinforce it for me. I can look at a chunk of source code, or an operations
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In my last post , I highlighted the design process, suggesting that designers and architects should consider using creativity, in addition to methods and patterns, to build a truly useful system. In this one, I'd like to talk about the business
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I ran into a friend today and, as friends often do, we let our conversation wander over the different "broken things" in IT in general (and a few in Microsoft in specific). One thing that I'd like to share from that conversation: a truly
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Imagine a time when building architecture meant "sketches" that would vary from one architect to another, one type of building to another. It must have been quite difficult for the skilled tradesmen to build anything more than individual
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It is nice to point out, on occasion, when two different leaders in the architecture community are saying things that, when added together, become greater than the sum of their parts. First off, my friend and colleague Gabriel Morgan recently described
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A couple of years ago, Phillippe Krutchen 'reinterpreted' the Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tsu for Software Architects ( link ). I saw it again recently and I have some new appreciation for the things I saw there. I most enjoyed this bit. (Note that the number
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Recently, Mike Walker posted a blog entry on the difference between Enterprise Architect and Solution Architect (sometimes called Application Architect). I think this is an interesting space, because I believe that some folks have a mistaken perception
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