Articles, Presentations and Writing

All of the material linked from this page is usable under Creative Commons licensing conditions - see below.

You can find more software architecture articles on my book's web page, which is linked from this page.

2010
May 2010	Applying Software Design Principles in Practice The slides for a session I ran with Nick Rozanski and Chris Cooper-Bland at SPA2010 .	[PDF]
Jan 2010	Agile Architecture: How Much is Enough? The slides for a session I ran at OOP 2010 which an updated version of my talk that explains how I've found it possible for software architects and agile teams to work together.	[PDF]
Jan 2010	Top 10 Software Architecture Mistakes The slides for a session I ran at OOP 2010 outlining the top ten mistakes that I've seen software architects (including myself) make again and again.	[PDF]
2009
Sept 2009	The System Context Architectural Viewpoint A working group paper that Nick Rozanski and I presented at a working group at WICSA 2009 outlining a new "context" viewpoint to add to our existing set of architecture viewpoints.	[PDF]
Sept 2009	Using Design Principles to Unify Architecture and Design The slides from my keynote talk at WICSA 2009 talking about how design principles can be used to pass context and design information throughout the design process, from enterprise architecture to detailed design.	[Slides]
Aug 2009	The Generation, Management and Handling of Errors An article that Andy Longshaw and I wrote for ACCU as a follow on from our original Euro PLoP 2004 paper on the same topic (see below).	[part1] [part2]
Apr 2009	Software Design Principles - Mining Pattern DNA The slides and a link to the outputs from a talk I gave with Andy Longshaw and Nick Rozanski given at SPA2009	[Slides] [Outputs]
Mar 2009	Pouring Data on Troubled Markets The slides and video replay from a talk given at QCON London 2009 explaining how we build new systems at BGI.	[PDF] [Video]
2008
Oct 2008	Top 10 Software Architecture Mistakes Slides The slides from a talk given at JAOO 2008 based on my 'Top 10 Mistakes' article (see below).	[PDF]
June 2008	System-Level Modelling with UML The slides from a talk given at Software Architect 2008 that explains an approach to creating systems-of-systems models using UML, by using a specific set of conventions and a number of extensions to the UML language via a custom profile. It also outlines how to implement the approach in a few of the more widely used UML modelling tools	[PDF]
June 2008	Agile Architecture - How Much is Enough? The slides from an updated version of my talk on agile architecture which has been reworked, with a slightly more technical focus, to talk more about software architecture rather than just enterprise architecture. Also presented at Software Architect 2008.	[PDF]
May 2008	Putting Software Architecture in its Place The slides from my keynote talk at the SEI's SATURN 2008 workshop along with a video replay of my presentation.	[PDF] [Video]
May 2008	Software Architecture: Stakeholders, Viewpoints and Perspectives The slides from the tutorial on software architecture that I gave at the SEI's SATURN 2008 workshop. These slides are very similar to those presented at OOPSLA 2006, but have been updated in various ways as a result of presenting the material a number of times.	[PDF]
Feb 2008	You Shall Integrate by the Sweat of Thy Brow ... The overview slides for a simulation session that I ran at SPA2008 with Rob James of HSBC. We designed the session to simulate the process of integrating enterprise systems and got one set of teams to work in a tactical ("just do it") way and one set of teams to work together via a shared XML schema. We have a lot of other supporting material for the session (system descriptions and so on) which we'd be prepared to allow people to use on a case-by-case basis. Contact us if you'd like access to this further material. The outputs of the session are here.	[PDF]
Feb 2008	Sold! How to Describe, Explain and Justify your Architecture The slides for a workshop I helped Nick Rozanski and Andy Longshaw to run at SPA2008, exploring what you should put in an architectural description document. The outputs of the session are here.	[PDF]
Feb 2008	The Agile Software Architect This article, written for DM Review, is based on my "Agile Architecture" presentation, developing that material into a fuller form, to explain how architects can work in an agile way, both in their own work and also when working with agile teams.	[Link]
2007
Aug 2007	Avoiding the Icebergs - Top Ten Software Architecture Mistakes In this short article I hope to share some of the pitfalls that I've encountered in my experience as a software architect and in so doing, help you to avoid making just the same mistakes on your projects! This article was split into two parts for publication, hence there are two links needed in order to read it.	[Link1] [Link2]
Jun 2007	Agile Architecture - How Much is Enough? The slides from a presentation I made at the EAC2007 conference exploring how architects can work in an agile way and work effectively with agile teams.	[PDF]
May 2007	Designing a DSL for Information Systems Architecture This CG2007 workshop allowed people to think about what the ideal DSL for describing the architecture of information systems would look like. Thanks to all who participated - some interesting ideas came out of the process.	[PDF]
Mar 2007	Strategies and Patterns for Systems Continuity This SPA2007 workshop explored approaches for ensuring system availability. Thanks to all who participated. Nick and I certainly learned a lot and we hope all of you did too! These slides we used in the session provide background information on assessing the availability needs of your system and the architectural solutions you can use to achieve them.	[PDF]
2006
Oct 2006	OOPSLA 2006 Tutorial T05 I presented our Software Architecture tutorial at OOPSLA in Portland in October 2006. These are the slides from the session, updated to remove minor errors spotted during the presentation.	[PDF]
Sept 2006	Past, Present and Future of Software Architecture I gave an updated version of my "PPF" talk to the BCS SPA Cambridge subgroup. Many thanks to all who attended. It seemed to go well and I enjoyed the discussion we had at the end of the talk. These are the slides I used for the talk, reorganised slightly for easy printing.	[PDF]
Mar 2006	Inversion of Control Containers in Java the slides from a workshop that Wolf Schlegel and I ran at the SPA2006 conference, providing an overview of Java IoC containers (like Spring and JBoss microcontainer). The outputs of the session are also available via the external link.	[PDF] [Link]
Mar 2006	Architecture Description Beyond UML the slides from a workshop that Nick Rozanski and I ran at the SPA2006 conference, where we tried to establish if there could be better alternatives to UML for architectural description. The outputs of the session are also available via the external link.	[PDF] [Link]
Mar 2006	The Past, Present and Future of Software Architecture slides from a talk I gave to the Kingston and Croydon local BCS branch.	[PDF]

2005
Nov 2005	Using Architectural Perspectives a paper Nick Rozanski and I wrote for the WICSA5 conference describing how I applied our perspectives idea to an EAI system.	[PDF]
Nov 2005	Software Architecture: Stakeholders, Viewpoints, Perspectives a tutorial I presented at WICSA5 that presents an outline of the key ideas from our book. The latest evolution of our Software Architecture Using Viewpoints and Perspectives presentation, reworked as a tutorial and augmented with notes.	[PDF]
Nov 2005	Architecture Description Languages in Practice a workshop report that Rich Hilliard and I wrote to report the work performed during the ADLs in Practice workshop at the WICSA5 conference. Presents an interesting perspective on ADLs, steming primarily from the ADL research community. To be honest, this certainly wasn't the outcome I was expecting from this event. The honesty, enthusiasm to work with practitioners and fantastic sense of humour exhibited by all of the ADL researchers really did cause me to re-evaluate my views on this research community. If nothing else, these are all people it's fun to have dinner with!	[PDF]
Oct 2005	Streamlining Your EJB Tests with Mock EJB An online article I wrote with Alexander Ananiev (author of Mock EJB) explaining how all types of EJBs can be unit tested using the Mock EJB library. Published on BEA's dev2dev site.	[Web]
Sept 2005	Maintaining and Increasing Stakeholder Confidence in IT Architecture The presentation slides for a talk I gave at CIO Summit, explaining how architects can engage stakeholders in the architecture process.	[PDF]
May 2005	Software Architecture Using Viewpoints and Perspectives The presentation slides for a talk I gave at the SET2005 conference, explaining how the use of viewpoints and perspectives can help architects to meet the challenges inherent in their role. Shortened and refined version of the longer tutorial that Nick Rozanski and I gave at the SPA2004 conference (below).	[PDF]
April 2005	Architectural Evaluation for Fun and Profit! The presentation slides for a tutorial I gave at the SPA2005 conference outlining the scenario-based approach to architectural evaluation (using methods like ATAM).	[PDF]
Feb 2005	Architecture Description Languages and Information Systems Architects: Never the Twain Shall Meet? A position paper written for the February 2005 meeting of the IFIP International Software Architecture Working Group (in Vancouver, BC, Canada) discussing why information systems architects don't use architectural description languages (ADLs).	[PDF]

2004
July 2004	Patterns for the Generation, Handling and Management of Errors A paper, written with Andy Longshaw from the EuroPLOP 2004 conference describing a set of patterns for error handling in information systems.	[PDF]
April 2004	Software Architecture with Viewpoints and Perspectives A presentation from the OT2004 conference describing explaining the use of viewpoints and perspectives for software architecture definition.	[PDF]

2003
April 2003	Tangled Webs The outputs from an OT2003 conference session I ran with Andy Longshaw on patterns for web service systems.	[Web]
April 2002	X[ML] Rated Architectures A presentation from the OT2002 conference describing my experiences creating an early XML-based distributed system product.	[PDF]

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