What we will learn in this article

  • What architects do
  • How knowing about software architecture will make you a better programmer and technical leader
  • How to get started on the path of becoming a software architect in your professional career

What software architects do

Software architects have many responsabilities aside fom programming:

1-   They define the problem from an engineering perspective

2-   They devide the software systems into implementable chunks

3-   Keep an eye on the big-picture to ensure the systems still works as a consistent whole

4-   Decide tradeofs among quality attributs (the -ilities)

5-   They manage the inivitable grouth of technical debt

6-   They develop their teams architecture skills

Software architect role

Lets deep diver into what a software architect do:

1- Define the problem from an engineering perspective

  • Software architecture design is a human-centered design
  • Everyone with a stake in the software can help understand what is expected of it
  • They work with product/project managers to define the business goals and requirements of the software
  • While product managers define features SAs keep an eye on another type of requirements called Quality attributes
  • They keep an eye on design constraints and features that might force the architecture down a specific path

2- Partition the system and assign responsabilities

3- Keep an eye on the bigger picture

Every Software system lives in the context of a bigger world

  • The users who interact with
  • The team that develops it
  • The hardware it runs on
  • The purpose of the software

The big picture of a software system

4- Decide Trade-offs among quality attributes

  • Example of a quality attribute is high avalaibility
    • To have higher availability you can use redundancy
    • you will have to buy more hardware
    • costs will grow
    • => Trade-off beween quality and costs

5- Manage technical Debt

  • Software architects know the details about how a system is partitioned
  • Thus they can keep an eye on the bigger picture and guide how everything comes together
  • They also connect Technology descisions with business needs
  • Knowing all this puts architects in the perfect position to manage technical debt.

Technical debt: is the gap between your software current design and the design you need it to have so you can keep delivering value

6- Grow the Team’s Architecture Skills

What is a software architecture

A system’s software architecture is the set of design descisions about how the software is organized to promote desired quality attributes and other properties (what are othe properties (??))

To promote a quality attribute means to encourage it to appear in the software system

Define the essential structures

To create a structure, take any element and connect it to another element using a relation

  • elements and relations are the bricks and mortar of software
  • In this article we will define three types of elements and relations (modules, Component and Connector C&C, Allocations)

Lets define each one of these three elements:

Example Elements Example Relations
Modules class, package, layer, module, configuration file, database table uses, allowed to use, depends on
Component & connector object, connection, thread, process, tier, filter call, pipe, pulish, subscribe, return
Allocations server, sensor, laptop, load balancer, team, A person, Docker container) runs in/on, responsible for, develops, stores, pays for
  • Module:
    • Elements that exist at design time
    • You interact with them to write code
    • They live in the filesystem
    • They exist ven if the software is not running

  • Component and connector:

    • These elements come into existance at runtime
    • Cease to exist when the system is not running
  • Allocations:
    • Created by showing how module and C&C elements correspond with each other and the physical elements that exist in real life.
    • Allocations structures are sometitmes called mapping stuctures since they show how different element map to one another
    • They allow us to answer questions like
      • Does an element run in the client machine or the server
      • Which teams are building which parts of the system

Conclusion

  • Architects are not software managers but they get to decide when and how software is delivred
  • They make sure software meets its business goals.
  • They write code
  • They not only design algorithms and code but they are at the center of everything (Users, business, technology)