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Beyond Software Architecture
Overview Beyond Software Architecture explains how to bridge the gap between the marketecture and tarchitecture- how to create a product that not only performs well, but which also appeals to the market. It is part of the Addison-Wesley Professional Series line of books (also containing notable titles like Design Patterns, Refactoring, and Patterns of Enterprise Architecture) but this latest installment in the series is (thankfully) paperback, so it comes at a paperback price ($39.99 USD).
I am a software developer with no marketing background who works in small development teams, usually in an open-source development atmosphere. I was excited to find this book because it told me what I need to consider for my projects to help them reach the intended user. There is a lot of helpful information in this book, and at times it almost seems to suggest more work than I can handle, but I think it will ultimately pay off to be able to use the knowledge gained.
Table of Contents Forwards by Martin Fowler and Guy Kawasaki
1. Software Architecture
2. Product Development Primer
3. The Difference between Marketecture and Tarchitecture
4. Business and License Model Symbiosis
5. Technology In-Licensing
6. Portability
7. Deployment Architecture
8. Integration and Extension
9. Brand and Brand Elements
10. Usability
11. Installation
12. Upgrade
13. Configuration
14. Logs
15. Release Management
16. Security
Appendix A. Release Checklist
Appendix B. A Pattern Language for Strategic Product Management
Organization by chapter: Chapters 1-3 set up the rest of the book, defining the scope of the book as well as concepts and key terms used throughout the book. They describe a product development cycle, the players involved, etc.
The remaining chapters each focus on a particular aspect of a software product and how it relates to both the customer and the product's architecture. Catalogs of alternatives are available for each topic along with caveats for each alternative.
For example, in Chapter 6, "Portability," the advantages and disadvantages of creating a portable application are discussed. If most of your customers are using Windows and your code is written in C++, then the cost of supporting Solaris as well may be the difference between a product's financial success and failure. The chapter reminds us that guaranteeing support for 6 operating systems and 4 database backends and 3 browsers means that we have to support and provide quality assurance for 6x4x3=72 combinations of products. Then it describes a process of eliminating or prioritizing combinations of platform support. The chapter goes on to describe ways in which a product's architecture can affect its portability and how best to write software to be portable.
Related to this is a discussion of how supporting particular platforms ties your release cycles into the release cycles of products you support-- another problem that can financially doom a project. Another point from Chapter 6 that I found interesting was what it means to support a platform-- the customer expects you to take advantage of the platform's features. Many cross-platform products are written to be identical on each platform they support, which means they probably ignore platform dependent libraries or features that can enhance performance or usability. This creates a potential place where competitors can gain an edge.
So you see each chapter goes into great length and detail to cover the nuances of its topic, and it is extensive enough that it can be overwhelming and even discouraging.
Who should read this book Anyone involved in software architecture or design, particularly project managers, whether in a very small group or a large corporate atmosphere. Open source developers are notoriously technically proficient, and often are not marketing-savvy. Oftentimes you have to be technically proficient to even install and use an open-source product. Ordinary developers who do not participate in architecture might benefit from reading this book in order to understand the decisions being made by the architects.
Why someone should read this book Many software industry professionals are not marketing experts and may even view the marketing department as their enemy. This book helps bridge that gap between marketing and project management, helping the two parties work together to create more effective, usable, or profitable software. Similarly, open-source developers usually architect and market their own software. Tactics described in this book could help OS developers create software that lasts longer, is more extensible, and more usable.
What this book is and is not. This is a general, and not technology-specific, guide to designing software and while doing so, keeping a marketing perspective in mind. It describes what things a software architect should remember when designing a product.
It is not a guide to marketing software. It does not recommend particular solutions for particular problems. It does not tell you what you should do, only what the consequences of your choices may be.
What I would like to see A similar book that concentrates on the open-source aspects of the topics included in this book and how and how not to use open source tools (like Freshmeat, Sourceforge, Bugzilla, CVS) for marketing and maintaining successful open-source projects.
Recommendation Buy this book if you have benefited from Design Patterns, Refactoring or Patterns of Enterprise Architecture. This book is a welcome addition to a line of books that has consistently contributed to the standard knowledge base of the software architecture discipline.
You can purchase Beyond Software Architecture from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
..."marketecture" or "tarchitecture" in written or verbal form, please kill yourself now.
I'm off to the suicide booth to pay for my sins.
Don't forget to consider the implementation of the buggytechture of your applications. It is important to give your users a reason to buy the next version.
I disagree. If developers (and analysts, project mgr's etc..) do nothing to care about the market (read: at least make the product easy to change/adapt) then the best thing that could happen is a lot of money spent to match user/market requirements.
Apple iProduct. Non importa cosa sia, lo comprerete!
Bullcrap!
Developers should care very much about the market, for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is the fact that the people who's job it is to do that may not have enough knowledge breadth to also understand the technical aspects, and how they are affected by market-based descisions. If you want your voice to be heard in these discussions you have to make certain you are talking in a language they understand.
Of course if you are content to let marketeers and product managers design your product and build your feature list, and then set your schedule without reference to the technical realities, you might think differently. You might also be working for Microsoft...
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Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
1) Sales/marketing talk to some clients, find out what they want.
2) Sales/marketing sign up clients for the beta.
3) Sales/marketing finally gets around to communicating to the dev team what they have promised the clients.
4) Sales/marketing blames the developers when they can't deliver what the client was promised.
This is actually not a joke. On one of that last projects I worked on, I was handed the "specification", which was basically a collection of photoshop mockups, and told that clients were going to be beta testing in 30 days....wheee!
If your developers are detacthed from the end result of the "want" or "need" their work is trying to satisfy then they are incapable of making good business decisions. They become "code monkeys".
I prefer my staff of developers to think of themselves as entrepreneurial craftsmen. The combination of shrewed businessmen and artfull solutions providers.
For starters, the home-user market is dead (or, more accurately, about to give its death rattle). Anyone who wants to engage in some activity A has only to go online and download any of a number of open-source or freeware systems for doing A. Oh, there are still a few holdouts; you still see some off-the-shelf software for sale in Comp USA, and I suppose there are some naiive users who are willing to buy them. But, it's definitely going away, and fast.
Organizations still buy software, but they generally contact the vendor directly, and secure site licenses. An example would be software development tools used by a government agency. In this case, there's very little marketing involved; a vendor submits a bid, competes with other vendors, and if successful, gets a contract. Any marketing that is done is done in a trade show, and the vendor generally understands the target market fairly well. Often, the vendor has a long relationship with their clients.
Then, there's highly specialized niche tools, like maybe high-end animation software, or music software. But those markets are tiny, sometimes maybe only a few hundred clients in total.
It seems to me that software is one of the few things with no mass market left. There are only specialized niches that still want to pay for software, and business categories where software has always been paid for in the same way. This is a book whose point I cannot fathom.
THIS IS NOT A TROLL. I'm serious. What's the point of programmers and techies getting all worked up over some marketing blather? It's just not central to the business anymore.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!