Our Travels in the Software Industry

Engineers in other disciplines often rely on fundamental principles, such as simplifying and eliminating unnecessary parts, to ensure the success of their projects. These principles are equally vital in software engineering. In this session, you'll learn how to apply these timeless principles to identify and avoid the most common pitfalls in software development, helping you maintain a balance between complexity and simplicity in your projects. Journey with us as we delve into the most common mistakes that pave the path to software over-engineering, such as gold plating, superfluous features, and premature optimization, among other popular complications. Your takeaways will be some practical strategies that will help you identify over-engineering when it happens, and hold the line against it. In short, you'll gain the tools needed to navigate software architecture decisions with confidence and skill.

TLDR: Architects get relatively few opportunities to practice their craft, so we will group up to formulate architectural visions for "real world" business problems. Attendees will then evaluate each group's solution to gain insight into the pros and cons of different approaches. Fred Brooks said, "How do we get great designers? Great designers design, of course." So how do we get great architects? Great architects architect, but architecting a software system is a rare opportunity for the non-architect. For this, we turn to an ancient tradition, born of the martial arts, designed to give the student the opportunity to practice more than basics in a semi-realistic way. The coding kata, created by Dave Thomas, is an opportunity for the developer to try a language or tool to solve a problem slightly more complex than "Hello world". The architectural kata, like the coding kata, is an opportunity for the student-architect to practice architecting a software system. In this workshop, attendees will be split into small groups and given a "real world" business problem (the kata). Attendees will be expected to formulate an architectural vision for the project, asking questions (of the instructor) as necessary to better understand the requirements, then defend questions (posed by both the instructor and their fellow attendees) about their choice in technology and approach, and then evaluate others' efforts in a similar fashion. No equipment is necessary to participate--the great architect has no need of tools, just their mind and the customers' participation and feedback.