Several local Cambridge businesses are behind a new lecture series titled “Cambridge Business Lectures” which begins on 22nd July with a talk by Cory Doctorow.

Here’s the blurb for this first talk:

“We made a bet, some decades ago, that the information economy would be based on buying and selling (and hence restricting copying of) information. We were totally, 100 percent wrong, and now the world’s in turmoil because of it. What does a copy-native economy look like? How do everyone from barbers to musicians become richer, more fulfilled and more civilly engaged in a real information society. And what do we do about the fact that a couple of dinosauric entertainment companies are determined to screw it up?”

The event is running at Robinson College, Cambridge from 17:30 and you can sign up here.

I ran my workshop When Good Architecture Went Bad again at this week’s Software Architect 2008 conference. The session drew just under 40 participants which was very satisfactory from my point of view.

Regular readers will know that the session covers common patterns of architectural decay and gives some tips on how to address such decay.

I’ve previously run the session at SPA 2008, ACCU 2008 and as a straight talk at May’s Embedded Masterclass events. Each time there’s no shortage of participants willing to share their architectural horror stories and yesterday’s session was no exception…

The examples I collected included:

• A software system where the threading architecture decayed so badly over time that the system became unmaintainable and had to be scrapped.
• A couple of examples of business logic (with associated SQL) being captured in the software’s presentation layer – making it hard to replace this layer.
• An example of a software package that became so big it couldn’t be understood by one person and so became really hard to maintain.
• A software system whose architecture had to be seriously bent in order to meet performance targets.
• Software with a large number of cyclic dependencies that ended up as brittle spaghetti code.
• Several examples of drive-by programming – team-membership constantly changing, programmers not understanding architecture and so making mistakes when they code and then moving on.
• One example of drive-by-architecting with similar consequences.
• Problems with obsolete software and hardware technology, lack of skills in these obsolete technologies leading to decay.
• A couple of examples of over-engineered (gold-plated) software modules.
• Sales-driven evolution – where there is no clear roadmap or scope for the software system and so the implemented software architecture inevitably diverges from the intended architecture.
• Lack of architectural direction – no one responsible for laying out an architectural vision, see related point on sales-driven evolution.
• Software that is bloated with technologies – new technologies e.g. web communication technologies being added without obsoleting older technologies.
• A big example where an outsourcer implemented everything in a software system rather than buying in some best-of-breed components. It was a good system but this example of not-invented here led to a huge software base that in the end couldn’t be maintained by the outsourcer or the customer due to lack of resources and skills.
• Merged companies with different cultures and different principles having to collaborate on a software system leading to decay.
• Uncontrolled code use – programmers grabbing code, classes and even variables from other parts of the software without any control on what could and couldn’t be used – once again led to an unmanageable code base.
• New people coming into the team and adding untested technologies to the software in an uncontrolled manner.

You can see reports on the previous deliveries of the workshop here: When Good Architecture Went Bad at ACCU 2008 and here: Architectural Decay at the Embedded Masterclass.

The next SPA Cambridge talk will be held from 19:00 on 14th May at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge (UK).

Something New Something Old - Wedding IT Development to Business Success with DSDM - Steve Messenger, Napp Pharmaceuticals

Synopsis

Agile development is seen as something relatively new. In fact many of the practices expounded have been around for quite a few years. 10 or more years ago IT professionals were, of course, experiencing many of the issues that agile methods hope to prevent - the wrong system being developed in isolation from the business and taking costing much longer than planned. In an attempt to counteract this, and also prevent a movement into a chaotic, hacking world, 12 professional bodies, including companies such as IBM, got together to create an agile method which also ensures quality and control. That method is DSDM Atern.

This talk will discuss:

• The Problems DSDM Atern helps to solve 
• The key working principles within DSDM Atern and how they merge nicely to the Agile Principles 
• The key techniques DSDM Atern offers to ensure timely delivery of solutions that truly meet business needs and provide business benefit. 
• How DSDM Atern is a good fit with Project management tools such as PRINCE2 and development methods such as XP. 
• How DSDM Atern can be used together with the PMBOK. 
• Some case studies of projects the speaker has carried out, with both the successes and areas to watch out for. 
• The applicability of the method to offshore projects - the subject of a recent DSDM Atern white paper co-authored by the speaker.
• The future for DSDM Atern and Agile.

The meeting is free and open to all but preregistration is required - please visit http://www.bcs-spa.org/cgi-bin/view/SPA/DSDMAtern for more information and to sign-up