This is a post in the mentoring series that aims to capture bits of experience that I impart on a Senior Analyst Programmer who is making the transition to Architect.

One thing that I have found from working on a few projects is the value of an architecture on a page diagram. A representation of the architecture that is abstract enough that a non-technical people e.g. Project Manager, Business. They need to be able to understand the components on it and the important bits, to be able to use it as a reference point when having a discussion. The diagram should also be accurate enough that you can use it when talking to technical people about technical details of the architecture e.g. Security, Infrastructure, Asset SMEs etc.

Unfortunately it isn’t something you can just create, these diagrams seem to evolve so I recommend that once you have attended enough discovery workshops and have a good grasp of the scope knock up a diagram of the proposed architecture and socialise it. Don’t be attached to the diagram it will most likely need to be changed based on feedback or it might need to be totally redrawn because people can’t connect with it. Let it evolve and you will know you have got it right when you see other people in the project with a tattered copy of the diagram with writing all over it and a coffee stain or two.

One of the biggest problems that occurs when evolving your architecture is miscommunications. When discussing an architecture it isn’t uncommon to spend half an hour or more talking about part of the architecture only to realise you were talking about two completely different parts of the design. A diagram allows you to have a common point of reference, something people can talk to and say “There is a firewall between that system and that system”.

Along the same lines when talking through constraints and the like with the business to explain a cost component etc the diagram allow you to better explain things. I am not sure if it means the person you are explaining it to better understands what you have explained but I think the value is that they can then point to their copy of the diagram and explain the constraint to someone else.

Hopefully doing this you will be able to better manage your stakeholders technical and not and end up with an architecture that is well understood so therefore gets through the necessary governance with little trouble.

This is a post in the mentoring series that aims to capture bits of experience that I impart on a Senior Analyst Programmer who is making the transition to Architect.

When a project kicks off there are usually a number of workshops where the business talks through the problem that they want to solve. This is a great opportunity for an Architect to better understand the scope of what they are being asked to design a solution to. The key her is to resist the urge to jump into solution mode, the business will fell a lot better that you understand what their problem is. Besides that there is a fair chance that you have made an incorrect assumption and your solution isn’t quite what the business is looking for.

The best thing an architect can do in these types of meetings is to Ask Questions this allows you to learn some very important things:

• Learn the business langauge: being able to talk about the problem in the langauge of the business will help build a relationship with the business. Don’t be afraid to play dumb, ask for something to be explained to you so you can understand.
• Get more detail: for the grey areas ask probing questions that will allow you to understand the scope better as well as some sort of priority. Questions like “Could you give me some more detail about what you mean by Onboard a Customer?” or “Do you see a mobile version of the site as mandatory or a nice to have?”
• Bring knowledge to the table: As you learn about the problem space you may see some quick wins for the project, this may be additional functionality that the project may be able to leverage off another system or a project bring these up. These sort of things can earn a few extra brownie points people alway like a bargain.
• Replay: For areas of the problem that could have a sizable impact on the cost of the project clarify what you have heard, “Can I just clarify the mobile site is a nice to have feature?”. You want to make sure that things like this aren’t an assumption but are a fact.

These sort of questions will allow you to learn so much more about the scope of the project. Once you have learnt as much as you can about the projects scope you can start talking about the high level architecture which will be the subject of my next post.

I have recently taken on the role of Mentor for a Senior Analyst Programmer who sees his next career move as becoming an Architect. As part of this process I thought it might be a good idea to capture the journey to hopefully help other people who are considering taking the jump from Development to Architecture.

There are two functions I see for myself in this role as mentor:

1. Ensure that our processes are followed and the right governance is adhered to.
2. Provide some experience by reviewing material, acting as a sounding board and also just bringing up gotchas and tips and tricks

It is the second function that I am hoping to capture in the series to posts that will be relevent to others. I am sure people aren’t interested in the many governance forums we have and other process hoops we have to navigate.

An article on ways to use your USB port:

Lasers also play a key part in the Beamz, a USB instrument that lets you make music by passing your hands through six different laser beams that project from it ($US199.95). Then again, musicians after something more conventional might prefer the USB guitar ($US99.99), which plugs into your computer so that you don’t need an amp. In fact, if you combine it with a USB drum kit ($69.95) and roll-up piano keyboard ($69.95), you could set up an office USB band. (May we suggest the name USB40?)

On the 26th August I attended the Australian Architecture Forum. This was the third time that the event was held and this year had three streams covering Green IT, Cloud Computing and General Architecture. The day was broken up into some tradition presentations as well as several Open Spaces sessions. The Open Spaces sessions where designed to encourage discussion of a particular topic by the participants in the room.

Anna Liu from the New South Wales University presented some insight from their research into Cloud Computing. They investigated the public offerings from Microsoft (Azure), Amazon (Elastic Compute Cloud) and Google (Google Apps). Some of the key take-aways were:

• Plan for Monitoring and Management: these were poorly dealt with by all the platforms
• Availability has become more of a design constraint than scalability

Gianpaolo Carraro from Microsoft presented “Head in the Clouds, feet on the ground” this was a general presentation on Cloud Computing and provided a good framework for migrating to Cloud Computing. The grid below presents an organisation with several Packaged and Home Built application that can be virtualised and some form.

The final presentation that I attended was on Sustainability for Architects and was presented by Peter Richardson from Object Consulting. He presented a fantastic view on the case for developing sustainable e architectures. Some key points were:

• The cost of energy is about to rise significantly which will directly impact to TCO of solutions.
• There is embodied energy which is the cost of producing the server(s) and the In-Use energy which is consumed with the running of the server(s).
• Infrastructure Architects are going to become even more important when designing solutions and will need to be engaged earlier.

The quality of the Open Spaces sessions was very dependent on the amount of knowledge in the room that could contribute to the discussion. The best of these sessions by far was on “What makes Architects useful to the business?” which was facilitated by Nigel Watson from Microsoft. We brainstormed several attributes of Architects which was entertaining as well as enlightening some of the interesting ones were:

• Relevance – from a technology and a business perspective (Ivory tower syndrome)
• Credibility – Are you perceived as a “Can Do” person?
• “Mordac the preventer” – Are you a blocker
• Bable fish – can you translate between business and technology

It once again was a great conference with plenty of valuable content and discussions both in the sessions and out of the session. There were noticeably less people at this year’s conference compared to previous years which talking to organisers was caused by less people representing each company. Hopefully the economy picks up and next years session is back as big an as great as previous years.

As you go through life there are many challenges that are placed in front of you but I would never have thought that Squirrels denting cars would be amoungst them.

Bought a 1 Terrabyte external hard drive yesterday as backup for my data. A far cry from my 20MB hard drive that came with my first computer. A nice no fuss drive, just plugged it in and started transferring files.

I have been reading a bit from John Bogle of late and came across an interesting term Retrospective Predictability that caught my attention. The term comes from the three characteristics that define what is called a ‘Black Swan’ event which he describes in his article Black Monday and Black Swans.

Retrospective Predictability is defined as:

A happening that, after the fact, our human nature enables us to accept by concocting explanations that make it seem predictable.

This term is used in the context of teh stock market but I think that such occurances also occur in technology as well as other areas. I could almost hear the chorus of memories when I or someone I was working with said ‘Oh yeah I knew that was going to happen’ when something went wrong.

Code Camp OZ is a great event that I would recommend you attending.

I just downloaded RC1 of IE8 to check it out. One of the first things that I have noticed is that a usability issue I was having regarding tab focus seems to have been fixed. I use Windows Live extensively was my mash-up of blogs and sites I like to keep track of. An anoying behaviour with IE7 tabs was that after clicking on a post in Windows Live it would load the article in a new tab, when I had finished readin the post I would close the tab to go back to Windows Live to find the next post I wanted to read. Well IE7 when you close a tab would give focus to the next tab on the right if there was one, which there usually was in my case, rather than Windows Live which was to the left. Well IE8 gives focus to the tab on the Left, Yeah!.

Another interesting feature is tab grouping, which visually is the tab that you clicked a link on and the tab containing the link being coloured the same, as above. Not sure if this will provide any value but interesting none the less.