I’ve been invited to speak at BCS SPA London on 4th March on the subject When Good Architecture Goes Bad.

Here’s the synopsis:

As software evolves, its architecture ‘as-is’ gradually deviates from its architecture ‘as-hoped-for’ – the software is said to erode or decay.

Software Erosion 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-hoped-for’ architecture – the situation becomes worse.

This session looks at examples of software erosion and explores practices to prevent or slow such decay. Participants should come prepared with architectural ‘war stories’. There will be a couple of group exercises but no test at the end.

Places are limited and you can sign up for the event here: http://www.bcs-spa.org/cgi-bin/view/SPA/WhenGoodArchitectureGoesBadLondon

March’s Software East event will focus on Technology Product Management. The event will take place at Downing College, Cambridge on the evening of Thursday 19th March.

The event will include a goldfish bowl session and I’m rounding up some subject-matter experts to act as goldfish. I’ve already approached a few people but anyone who thinks they’d make a good goldfish for this session should get in touch.

Our Code Generation 2009 keynotes Steven Kelly and Markus Völter have decided to break with tradition and will join forces to deliver both keynote talks as a team:

MDD: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly will cover the best and worst practices of Model-Driven Development at an introductory level.

MDD: The Best, The Worst and The Ugliest will describe best and worst MDD practices at a more advanced level.

More details to follow…

Thursday’s  Software East event at Downing College, Cambridge has as its focus a panel session on Building a Software Business. Confirmed panellists are Neil Davidson (Red Gate Software) organiser of the ‘Business of Software’ conference, Allan Kelly (Independent) author of ‘Changing Software Development: Learning to become Agile’ and John Melotte (Corum Group) an experienced software company founder and finance expert.

Whether you’re thinking about a business idea, developing a business plan, finding funding, bootstrapping the business using your own resources or have successfully launched your business and are looking for tips on growing and sustaining it you will get something from our expert panel.

Entry £20  including light buffet, by preregistration at www.software-east.co.uk . Registration and Networking from 18:30.

Things are coming together nicely for next year’s Code Generation conference.

The Call for Speakers has generated 58 proposals. This is more than last year and a good indicator of interest in the event. I’m now working with the programme committee to select the best proposals and we should have the schedule finalised by the end of February.

Jorn Bettin, Tony Clark and I are also co-organising a workshop at the conference that is part of a worldwide series of discussions on creating a consensus on the role of domain-specific languages in  our industry. We’re looking for paper submissions before April 15th. See the workshop page for more information.

OMG, IASA, InfoQ & ACCU have signed up again as supporting partners. This helps us spread the word about the event to their membership. OMG, IASA and ACCU members will also get a nice 10% off conference fees when booking opens.

Methods & Tools have joined again as a media partner. If you haven’t seen them before they produce a nice newsletter covering all aspects of software development. Skills Matter have also signed up as media partners. If you’re not aware of them they do a lot of training, particularly in open source technologies. Skills Matter community members will also receive a 10% discount on conference fees.

Finally, Peter Bell has once again volunteered to co-ordinate the Birds-of-a-Feather sessions at the event. If you have an idea for such a session then please email Peter at cg2009@systemsforge.com.

A quick reminder that the Call for Speakers for June’s Code Generation 2009 event closes tomorrow.

Accepted speakers have their conference fees waived.

Software East’s January event at Downing College, Cambridge has as its focus a panel session on Building a Software Business. Early bird booking for the event closes tomorrow (15th January).

Confirmed panellists are Neil Davidson (Red Gate Software) organiser of the ‘Business of Software’ conference, Allan Kelly (Independent) author of ‘Changing Software Development: Learning to become Agile’ and John Melotte (Corum Group) an experienced software company founder and finance expert.

Entry £15  including light buffet, by preregistration at www.software-east.co.uk  on or before 15th January, £20 afterwards. Registration and Networking from 18:30.

We’ve just launched the Practical Product Lines network  - a new social network for practitioners, researchers and anyone who’s plain curious about System and Software Product Lines.

The topics you’ll find discussed there relate to the process, practice, technology or people issues involved in developing Systems or Software Product Lines. We’re also planning to schedule regular chats with well-known people in the community. Join up and let us know who you’d like to hear from.

I’ve recently set up a Google Group to discuss the problem of software architecture decay:

As software evolves, its architecture ‘as-is’ deviates from its architecture ‘as-intended’, the architecture is said to decay. This group explores software architecture decay. Decay is a problem because the time, effort and risk of making new changes grows and change typically causes more deviation.

I’m interested in collecting examples of such decay, tools for slowing decay and approaches for measuring the value of decay and communicating that to non-technical people.

The group came about because a number of people have left my ‘When Good Architecture Goes Bad’ workshop wanting to discuss the problem further.

Membership is by invitation only: http://groups.google.com/group/when-good-architecture-goes-bad/ (Contact me if you want to be invited)

Ivan Moore is heading from England to Germany by bike to raise funds for the National Autistic Society.

Ivan has spoken at SPA Cambridge a couple of times and is also heavily involved in the SPA group and conference.

Ivan is also giving up a day of his time to any company that wants to make a reasonable donation to this cause. This could be assistance with continuous integration or test-driven development for example, two of his areas of expertise. You can find out more about the trip and how to donate here.