Session:Rationale--Positions
From WICSA Conference Wiki
moderator: Jeff Tyree
Abstract
Architecture decisions are a primary representation of architecture. Good architecture results from making good architectural decisions. During this session, we will focus on several aspects of architecture decision decisions:
• How do architecture design decisions fit into the overall body of knowledge that an architect needs to know, leverage and maintain?
• What are emerging best practices and thinking in the management of architecture decisions?
• What alternatives exist for managing system knowledge?
• For a series of case studies, what are the key architecture design decisions that drove their implementations? What decisions were relevant and which weren’t?
• For the case studies, how were decisions managed on these “real examples”? How were they socialized? How did they change with time? Where any aides available for managing decisions?
Organization
Wednesday 3:15-5:00 and Thursday 8:00-9:30
Wow! We have nine papers to cover incorporating everything you want to know about Architectural Design Decisions in just a little over 3 hours. In keeping with the spirit of a working and discussion session, we will organize as follows.
(1) Each presenter will have 15 minutes to present his/her paper. The presenter should spend the first 5 minutes covering the key points and unique findings of the paper, the second 5 minutes answering pre-posted questions (or comments), and 5 minutes of general Q&A from the group.
(2) Wednesday will be primarily focused on Processes, Tools and Concepts for the management, rationalization, and reuse of architecture decisions. One of the case studies will be covered to manage the time constraints across Wednesday/Thursday. The following papers will be covered on Wednesday.
• Building up and Exploiting Architectural Knowledge
• Position on Ontology-Based Architecture
• Common Rules Repository Enterprise Architecture
• Towards an Operational Framework for Architectural Prototyping
• Successful Architecture for Short Message Service Center
After the papers are presented we briefly brainstorm discussion topics and spend the remaining time (~30 minutes) discussing these topics. These topics should ideally be focused on gaps, needs, and applicability of the content to those involved in both the research and practice of architecture.
(3) Thursday will be focused on understanding how Architecture Design Decisions are used in practice. The presenter should focus on the key architecture decision decisions that influenced the architectures. The following papers will be covered:
• Explicit Models for Dynamic Software
• The Amigo Service Architecture for the Open Networked Home Environment
• DMDA - A Dynamic Service Architecture for Scientific Computing
• An Architecture and Its Rationale
After the papers are presented we will briefly brainstorm discussion topics and spend the remaining time (~30 minutes) discussing these topics.
Participants
Please add yourself to this list. Tell us something about your background. Add a few sentences about the working session topic such as your position, questions you would like to see discussed, etc.
- Jeff Tyree - Moderator.
- Wesley Coelho - wiki coach.
- Art Akerman - Presentor, Position on Ontology-Based Architecture
- Ivor Bosloper - Presentor, Position on Explicit Models for Dynamic Software
- Eltjo Poort - Presentor, Successful Architecture for a Short Message Service Centre
- Drasko Sotirovski - Presentor, An Architecture and Its Rationale.
- Kong Posh Bhat - Participant, Sr Staff Engineer, Advanced Software Technologies Group, Samsung Telecommunications America
- Rafael Capilla - Participant, Assoc. Prof. University Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain
- Steve Gordon - Participant, Software Engineer, Union Switch & Signal
- Chris Corbell - Participant, Software Engineering Lead, Extensis Inc.
- Joao Sousa - Participant. Position: the "goodness" of decisions, and of architectures, is not absolute. A good architecture is only "good" relative to a problem or set of circumstances. What elements need to be taken into account for a cost-benefit analysis of a decision? How to document the tradeoffs being made? (so that the decision can be reexamined if conditions change)
- Kim - Participant; System Architect, ST Training & Simulation System
- Hans van Vliet - Presenter, Building Up and Exploiting Architectural Knowledge.
- Rod Nord.
- Jesper Andersson - Presenter, Position on adaptive architectures for scientific computing.
- PerOlof Bengtsson, Ericsson AB - Participant, working as Architect and developer at Ericsson AB. My position pivots around architecting in practice, and the introduction of Software Architecture practices into development organizations. Documenting and describing software architectures is very important and my key concern is that of keeping the documentation artefacts and the implementation artefacts consistent, such that the documentation describes what is really implemented and vice versa.
- Nikolaos Georgantas - Presenter, INRIA Rocquencourt, France
- Klaus Marius Hansen - Presenter, University of Aarhus. Our position is that experimental approaches to software architecting (including architectural prototyping and simulation) need to play a greater role in making software architecture design decisions than they often do today. We here focus on architectural prototyping and try distill the process involved in architectural prototyping
Pre-registration for working sessions on the wiki is now closed. If you have not done so already, please sign up for working sessions at the conference registration table on Monday or Tuesday morning. We want to keep these sessions small to foster discussion. Seating is limited in some rooms. Because of this there may be a limit on the number who can participate - if that is the case then the first to sign up will be given preference. Once you have signed up at the registration table and ensured you have a spot, you can return here and add yourself to the list and introduce yourself.
