Software Engineering Radio

Recording Venue:
Guest(s): Bernhard Merkle

Host(s): Markus
During Evolution of a software system, it becomes more and more difficult to understand the originally planned software architecture. Often an architectural degeneration happens because of various reasons during the development phases. In this session we will be looking how to avoid such architectural decay and degeneration and how continuous monitoring can improve the situation (and avoid architectural violations). In addition we will look at “refactoring in the large” and how refactoring can be simulated. A new family of “lint like tools for software architectures” is currently emerging in the marketplace I will show some examples and how they scale and support you in real world projects.

Links:

• Sotograph
• Bauhaus
• SonarJ
• Structure101
• Lattix
• Klocwork K7
• XRadar (opensource)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Recording Venue: JAOO 2007
Guest(s): Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

Host(s): Markus
In this episode, Markus talks to Rebecca Wirfs-Brock on what she has learned from architecture reviews. This is a very complement to the earlier episode on architecture evaluation.

Links:

• Rebecca’s Website
• More of her Writings

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Recording Venue: JAOO 2006
Guest(s): Dragos Manolescu

Host(s): Markus
In this Episode we discuss software architecture evaluation with Dragos Manolescu, an architect at Microsoft’s patterns & practices group.

We start off the discussion by trying to define what software architecture evaluation is and when and you want to evaluate an architecture in the system’s lifecycle. We then make sure evaluators set the expectations for the evaluation process right – it is important to understand that architecture evaluation is typically not primarily a review of the technology decisions made for the architecture.

We then discuss the kinds of notations that are useful for describing architectures, and which of these are especially helpful for the evaluator. Next we look at the core of the architecture evaluation task, namely, the integration of the various stakeholders and their views. We also discuss real reviews from reviews that are staged “for show” only.

Next in the discussion is a brief look at the tools you can use for architecture evaluation, as well as a closer look at the various methods for achitecture evalualtion proposed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). We conclude the discussion by outlining how architecture evaluation fits into an agile development process.

… and finally, we briefly plug the PLOPD5 book, on which Dragos, Markus and James Noble have been working recently

Links:

• Inforation about the PLOPD5 book
• Microsoft’s patterns & practices group
• Information about ATAM from softwarearchitectures.com.
• Detailed description of ATAM (PDF)
• Dragos’ Homepage
• Dragos’ slides on architecture evaluation

Podcast: Play in new window | Download