Software Engineering Radio

Recording Venue: WebEx

Guest: Ellen Gottensdiener and Mary Gorman

Ellen Gottensdiener and Mary Gorman of EBG Consulting talk with Neil Maiden about agile projects, requirements practices and their new book entitled Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis. The conversation begins with an exploration of how agile has changed requirements and project practices over the last decade. Ellen and Mary then talk about some of the big concepts in agile requirements — creating a product by identifying and building product options that provide value, and recognizing the importance of product partnerships. Particular importance is placed on the structured conversation, a technique for ongoing, systematic and collaborative delivery of product options. The conversation ends with Ellen and Mary recommending changes that analysts might adapt in their current requirements practices.

• Discover to Deliver book website
• “A Quick Dip into Discover to Deliver“
• “Strengthen Your Discovery Muscle“
• Short readings related to Discover to Deliver
• Author Book Club Webinar about Discover to Deliver
• Download Visual Elements from the book (including the 7 Product Dimensions and the Options Board Kit)
• Learn and apply with EBG Consulting

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Recording Venue: Skype

Guest: Eric Lubow

Eric Lubow and Robert discuss polyglot persistence, a term used to describe systems that incorporate multiple specialized persistent stores rather than a single general-purpose database.  Eric provides insights into the forces driving this trend:  including diverse data usage patterns, low latency, and increasing volumes of data.  The emergence of many free storage servers that perform well much better than most general-purpose databases for specific usage patterns has made polyglot persistence cost-effective.   Eric shares some of his experiences deploying storage solutions, programming languages, and the driver libraries.  Eric and Robert wrap up with a discussion of the impact of polyglottism on architecture and testing.  Along the way, they explore the cultural shifts that need to take place as organizations move from the one-size-fits-all model.

• Eric Lubow’s blog
• @elubow on Twitter
• Eric Lubow’s presentation at the Cassandra Summit 2012
• Slides from Eric’s presentation
• Martin Fowler’s book NoSQL Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Emerging World of Polyglot Persistence
• SimpleReach web site

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Recording Venue:
Guest(s): Grady Booch

Host(s): Markus
In this Episode we are happy to talk to Grady Booch. We started off by discussing his Architecture Handbook, how it came into being, the progress, and how it will look like once it’s finished. In this context we also looked at the issue of how to distinguish architecture from design. We then asked him about how “professional” software architecture is these days, as well as about the ubiquity of software product lines in industry. The next couple of minutes looked at the question of whether software development is an engineering discipline, craftsmanship or an art form, and we discussed the key qualifications of software developers. Grady then elaborated on the problems of developing in large teams as well as the potential limits of complexity we can tackle with software.

We then got back to a more technical discussion, where we looked at model-driven development, DSLs, etc. and the role of the UML in that context. Next was a discussion about scripting languages, and the current trend towards new languages. We then looked at component marketplaces and other forms of reuse, as well as the importance of OO these days and the relevance of AO. We concluded with a (small) outlook to the future.

Links:

• Book: Design Patterns, by the Gang of Four
• Some of the books by Henry Petroski
• Info on CelsiusTech’s Ship System 2000 product line
• Info on the Turing Lecture; here are Grady’s slides
• Book: Distributed Work, by by Pamela J. Hinds and Sara Kiesler (eds)
• Book: Organizational Patterns by Jim Coplien and Neil Harrisson
• Book: The Sciences of the Artificial, Herbert Simon
• Info on the LabView toolkit from National Instruments
• The approach used by Nokia for mobile phone software development
• Grady’s Blog
• SEI Software Architecture site
• A paper describing the approach to software development by Intentional Software, Charles Simonyi

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