A developer-friendly guide to software architecture, technical leadership and the balance with agility

This book is a practical and pragmatic guide to lightweight software architecture for developers. You'll learn:

• The essence of software architecture.
• Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.
• The things that you *really* need to think about before coding.
• How to visualise your software architecture using simple sketches.
• A lightweight approach to documenting your software.
• Why there is *no* conflict between agile and architecture.
• What "just enough" up front design means.
• How to identify risks with risk-storming.

JavaRanch awarded the book 10/10 - "Highly recommended reading."

Five things every developer should know about software architecture

1. Software architecture isn't about big design up front

Software architecture has traditionally been associated with big design up front and waterfall-style projects, where a team would ensure that every last element of the software design was considered before any code was written. Software architecture is basically about the high-level structure of a software system and how you get to an understanding of it. This is about the significant decisions that influence the shape of a software system rather than understanding how long every column in the database should be.

2. Every software team needs to consider software architecture

Regardless of the size and complexity of the resulting product, every software team needs to consider software architecture. Why? Put simply, bad things tend to happen if they don't! If software architecture is about structure and vision, not thinking about this tends to lead to poorly structured, internally inconsistent software systems that are hard to understand, hard to maintain and potentially don't satisfy one or more of the important non-functional requirements such as performance, scalability or security. Explicitly thinking about software architecture provides you with a way to introduce technical leadership and stacks the odds of a successful delivery in your favour.

3. The software architecture role is about coding, coaching and collaboration

The image that many people have of software architects is of traditional "ivory tower" software architects dictating instructions to an unsuspecting development team. It doesn't need to be like this though, with modern software architects preferring an approach that favours coding, coaching and collaborative design. The software architecture role doesn't necessarily need to be undertaken by a single person plus coding is a great way to understand whether the resulting architecture is actually going to work.

4. You don't need to use UML

Again, traditional views of software architecture often conjure up images of huge UML (Unified Modeling Language) models that attempt to capture every last drop of detail. While creating and communicating a common vision is important, you don't need to use UML. In fact, you could argue that UML isn't a great method for communicating software architecture anyway. If you keep a few simple guidelines in mind, lightweight "boxes and lines" style sketches are an effective way to communicate software architecture.

5. A good software architecture enables agility

There's a common misconception that "architecture" and "agile" are competing forces, there being a conflict between them. This simply isn't the case though. On the contrary, a good software architecture enables agility, helping you embrace and implement change. Good software architectures aren't created by themselves though, and some conscious effort is needed.

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