Very important Solutions – The solution Architect

In early days of software development little thought was given to how the application applications and systems we built were architected. There have been several reasons for this: firstly, software development being new, the idea hadn’t been looked at, and secondly we didn’t realize how important architecture was to the price of maintaining our applications and systems. Upon sober reflection, we probably must have foreseen the need for planned architecture and architects because building software isn’t radically distinctive from building some other structure, as an example buildings and bridges. We can’t return and undo the damage done by the lack of foresight that generated badly architected applications and systems but as project managers we are able to avoid making this mistake in our next software development project.

Today most organizations whose core competencies include software development recognize the significance of architecture with their business and have satisfied this need by creating the role of architect and making this individual responsible for the architecture of all software applications and systems they develop. Even organizations whose core competencies don’t include software development, but who have invested heavily in IT, have created this role. These folks may be called the Chief Architect, Head Architect, or Strategic Architect. Wikipedia identifies 3 different types of architect with regards to the scope of the responsibilities: the enterprise architect who’s responsible for all an organization’s applications and systems, the perfect solution is architect who’s responsible for the architecture of something made up of more than one applications and hardware platforms, and the application architect whose responsibility is limited by one application. The category and number of architects will usually be constrained by how big is the business and the number of applications and systems it supports. Regardless of what the business you work for calls them, the application architect has a key role to play in your software project.

Your job as project manager of a pc software development project, where a pc software architect is set up, is to ensure their work is properly defined and organized which means your project receives maximum benefit from their expertise. If the business does not have an architect set up you will have to identify someone in your team to fill that role. What’s not acceptable is always to plan the project without the acknowledgment of the need or significance of the architect. This role requires just as much understanding of the device components that you can, including software and hardware knowledge. In addition, it requires deep technical understanding of the technology being used, both hardware and software and strong analytical skills. The individual (other than a pc software architect) who most probably possesses a skill set similar to this one, is a company or systems analyst. Dependant on the size and complexity of the existing system, and your project, existing skill sets might not be sufficient to meet up your project’s needs. There are ample training opportunities available so select one that many closely suits your preferences and have your candidate attend. If your project has adequate budget to cover working out, fine. If not, keep in mind that the skill set acquired by the trainee will soon be available to the business after your project is completed and your project should not have to bear the entire cost of the training.

Now that you’ve a qualified software architect engaged for your project, you need to plan that person’s tasks to take maximum advantage of the skills. I suggest engaging the architect as in early stages in the project that you can so they can influence the definition of the application or system being developed. The team that defines the business enterprise requirements to your project will soon be from the business enterprise side of the business and have deep understanding of how the business enterprise runs but little understanding of the existing systems and technical top features of the hardware and software which will deliver the solution. Having a pc software architect available during requirements gathering exercises will help you define requirements that leverage existing system and solution platform strengths and avoid weaknesses. Leaving their input till a later phase exposes your project to the danger of re-engineering the perfect solution is to suit existing architecture or avoid solution weaknesses, following the fact. Involve the application architect in requirements gathering exercises as a consultant or SME (subject matter expert) who will explain risks in defining requirements and offer alternative solutions.

The key deliverable your architect is responsible for is the architectural drawing. This is simply not actually a drawing but a mix of drawings and text. The drawings will represent the various components of the device and their relationship to one another. The writing will describe data elements, relations between various architectural elements, and any standards designers must adhere to. The drawing may be a new one to represent a fresh system, or it may be an upgrade of an existing drawing to reflect the changes to an existing system produced by your project. The development of the architectural drawing is the first design activity in your project schedule. The drawing is found in the exact same fashion that engineering staff and skilled craftsmen use an architectural drawing of a building or bridge.

Analysts and programmers will use the Business Requirements Document (BRD) to tell them what features and functions to design and the architectural drawing to tell them how their software must fit along with other software in the device, any constraints the device places on the design, standards the brand new software must meet, and what critical data elements look like. The info in this drawing is determined by the perfect solution is chosen, the hardware chosen, the existing system and the complexity of the project. For instance, projects using an Object Oriented solution will have 4 layers: a user interface layer (the layer the user sees), a credit card applicatoin layer (where the work is done), a domain layer (where business logic is applied), and an infrastructure layer (for logging messaging, etc.). Other solutions may call for more or fewer layers.

Software development projects which depend on a relational database to store and retrieve large volumes of data will have a database architect who’s responsible for the look of the database. The database architect should be described as a member of one’s project team and their design should really be coordinated with the device architecture so that the data elements in the architectural drawing are defined the exact same way because they are in the database’s data dictionary. Database design is important to system performance. Poor database design, or database design which doesn’t support the applications utilizing it, will deliver something with poor performance so database design and architectural design must be inputs together to yield a well integrated system with the performance characteristics required.

The architectural drawing must be approved by the project sponsor, project steering committee and the organization’s enterprise architect/chief architect/head architect where see your face isn’t the architect in your team. In many cases people other than another architect won’t have the capacity to determine whether the drawing contains all the data required by the project, or whether the device design is sound. They will be able to ascertain that every category of information has been addressed and that the drawing meets any requirements defined for this in the Project Charter, Statement of Work (SOW), or scope statement. After the drawing has been approved it ought to be communicated to the analysts who’re responsible for producing design specifications.

The application architects role doesn’t end with the production of the architectural drawing, indeed in a few software development lifecycle (SDLC) methodologies this drawing will soon be produced iteratively. It could be manufactured in stages such as the infrastructure layer first, the domain layer next, etc. or it may be produced iteratively, one new version for every iteration. Even projects using Waterfall SDLC methodology won’t necessarily produce a final drawing during the project planning phase since they don’t need to. The designers must have a drawing that delivers them with the data they need when they need it and you might need to start design work with the drawing you’ve in order to keep to schedule.

The architect must make certain that the look captured in Functional specifications and detail design documents conforms to the constraints placed upon it by the architectural drawing. To do this they must review the designs to ascertain compliance. top architects in Florida The architect should be described as a person in any peer review teams reviewing design. This might not be possible, especially if you have to fairly share an architect with another project or operations so at minimum the architect should review each design and ensure compliance using their architectural design, or identify gaps where it will not.

The hardware and operating systems which are components of the device architecture are aspects of oversight for the architect. Projects which call for procurement of these materials, or outsourcing of the development of any applications, should engage the architect to contribute to product and vendor selection criteria. Some architectural drawings may specify hardware and software with regards to the solution being implemented, by which case the data should really be contained in the architectural drawing. Where requirements for these specific things are less well defined, the architect should make sure that selection criteria properly reflect their architectural requirements and that the statement of work for any outsourced software is correctly written. In projects where software development work is outsourced, the architect’s role could be the same like the work were being done in-house. Large projects which require the seller to staff their team with a pc software architect must have their architectural design overseen by the architect for your project.

Finally, the architect must also be called upon to analyze any changes to software design or functionality that can cause a change in the architecture. Your architect could be the right person to analyze any request to ascertain where a change in the look of just one system component would affect other components of the architecture. After the architect has determined in case a change in other components could be required, and what the nature of that change could be, it’s as much as your design and build gurus to assess the price of that change.