Software Architecture

BShive writes "Software Architecture: Organizational Principles and Patterns covers the VRAPS model and the organizational aspects of Software Architecture. Patterns and Antipatterns are explored that resolve or complicate problems depending on the criteria involved. A Pattern that solves one situation might become an Antipattern in another, as not all situations need the same solutions. This fact is something forgotten too often in software projects. Architects, coders and even managers might benefit from the information contained in this book. Being able to identify and solve problems in a project and its organization is important for any large software project no matter where you are in the development chain." Read on for the rest of Ben's review. Software Architecture: Organizational Principles and Patterns author David M. Dikel, et al pages 250 publisher Prentice Hall PTR rating 7 reviewer Ben Shive ISBN 0130290327 summary Useful approach to organizing software projects, from people to code.

The book opens by explaining what VRAPS (Vision, Rhythm, Anticipation, Partnering, and Simplification) is and what the book can do for the reader. Software Architecture is increasingly important, but the organizational aspect is often overlooked. Architecture and Organization do overlap, but to the executive the Architecture side is hidden, and to the practitioner the Organizational side is hidden. VRAPS attempts to shift the perspectives of the executive and practitioner to provide a more balanced view. An excellent summary of why each of the VRAPS principles are important is provided. A short example scenario follows, briefly illustrating how the model can be used and misused. These concepts are further expanded throughout the book.

The second chapter is essentially a more detailed look at VRAPS and how everything fits together. Criteria, Patterns and Antipatterns are explained, along with a short history of VRAPS. An amusing anecdote mentioned was a manager who divided his program into one hundred modules to show percent complete. Only five modules had more than 100 lines of code. One of the five had over a million lines. There are similar occurrences throughout the book that illustrate various follies in software development and management.

Chapter three deals with maintaining the vision and direction of the project while balancing all the influences. To a manager, the project may look perfectly ordered on paper while features are added and removed. On paper it still looks neat, but to the practitioner it can appear a jumbled mess. The reader also sees the first example of how the situation layouts are handled in the book. A short summary covering the Criteria, Antipatterns, and Patterns is presented. Then each criterion is further examined with its related Antipatterns and Patterns.

Further chapters proceed with introducing various development concepts that complete the VRAPS moniker. How to put the concepts into practice is explored through the same Criteria, Antipattern and Pattern layout. It does an excellent job of illustrating each part of VRAPS. Following at least some of the principles will result in a project that will be successful, instead of becoming one of the book's examples where the team ended up with nothing to show for its work.

The chapter on the Allaire (now part of Macromedia) case study was the most interesting chapter of the whole book. Company and product development is followed, including mistakes made along the way. The final chapter on 'Building and Implementing a Benchmark' was rather unimpressive. It seemed merely tacked onto the end and included no real conclusion to the entire book. However, the rest of the book is a solid piece of work with very useful information.

The anecdotes and examples throughout keep the reading from becoming too dull. Even with a flat finish to the book it contains plenty of valuable information and is worth the admission price, though it could have been better still.

Chapters

1. What You Can't See could Help You
2. The VRAPS Reference Model: How the Pieces Fit Together
3. Projecting and Unifying Vision
4. Rhythm: Assuring Beat, Process, and Movement
5. Anticipation: Predicting, Validating, and Adapting
6. Partnering: Building Cooperative Organizations
7. Simplification: Clarifying and Minimizing
8. Principles at Work: The Allaire Case Study
9. Case Study: Building and Implementing a Benchmark Using VRAPS

Appendixes

A. Quick Reference Table: Principles, Criteria, Antipatterns, and Patterns
B. Antipattern and Pattern Summaries

You can purchase Software Architecture: Organizational Principles and Patterns from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

This brain rot gives me a headache.

[nadador]

This is exactly what's wrong with the universe, or at least the small part of the universe occupied by software engineers.

What has all of our Functional, Object Oriented, Extreme Programmed, UML-based, XML compliant, Pattern-ed or Anti-Pattern-ed flow charts in animated PowerPoint got us? Its got us a load of crap, thats what. A load of crap. We re-org endlessly. We have more meetings. We write more Standard Operating Procedures. We rewrite the coding standard. We switch languages, run times, operating systems, and libraries. We refactor, re-code, re-work, re-design and re-plan. And we get a load of crap. We manage, and plan and re-manage and re-plan, depending on what the winds of your upper management's whims dictate is the "in" style for the day.

What should all of this tell us?

Software engineering is a practical craft. No amount of process will ever make up for proper training, proper documentation, proper version control, and proper testing. Ever. And that's the way it is. If you have good people, set them free. If you don't, spend a little money to train them to their highest potential instead of trying to make them good cogs in a crappy buzzword wheel.

In the end, 99% of the work done by software engineers is just rearranging magnetic pixy dust on some drive platter, or scattering the electrons in a flash or DRAM or SRAM cell. Most of our value to the universe is just damned pixy dust. And it shouldn't be this difficult.

We don't need any more of this - we all just need to learn how to be practical craftsmen that get *work* done.