I’ve heard that my session proposal for SPA 2008 has been accepted.

The session will be a 150 minute workshop titled “When good architecture goes bad” and will investigate the issue of software architectural decay and the value of preventing such decay.

Here’s the session abstract:

As software evolves its architecture as-is deviates from its architecture as-intended – the architecture is said to decay.

Architectural decay can be a problem because:

• the time, effort and risk in implementing further changes increases
• the effect of further changes becomes harder to predict
• further changes typically cause the as-is architecture to deviate further from the as-intended architecture – the situation becomes worse.

This session looks at examples of architectural decay and explores practices to prevent or slow such decay. A key element of the session is an attempt to place a value on such preventative work.

Objectives:

1. To explore the effects of architectural decay.
2. To agree that preventing (or slowing) architectural decay is a ‘good thing’.
3. To identify possible practices for maintaining architectural integrity.
4. To identify the value of preventative work to prevent or slow architectural decay.