Jan Bosch
There’s a scenario that keeps repeating itself in our collaborations with a variety of companies. We come in and agree to work on a specific data-driven use case. The company claims to have vast amounts of data and nobody in the company worries about not having the data available. That is, until they start looking … Read more
One of the worst misconceptions in software engineering is the assumption that if we build software based on a requirement specification, test it according to the spec and deliver it to our customers, we’ve delivered value to these customers. This may be the case when a small team of consultants develops software for a single, … Read more
Humans are belief-driven storytelling machines who post-rationalize their, often irrational, behavior. This is at odds with our self-image of rational beings who make measured, balanced choices between well-reasoned alternatives. While this image may hold up in some contexts, research in psychology and elsewhere shows that unless there’s a non-negotiable yardstick holding us accountable, we easily … Read more
Architecture provides the linchpin between business strategy and technology strategy. Previously, we’ve explored how deep the relationship is between architecture choices and the available business strategy options. As the world is constantly evolving, we need to evolve with it. This means not only adjusting our business strategy to changes but also, by extension, changing the … Read more
When I wrote my first book in the 1990s, it was on software architecture. The central tenet at that time was that we had to be careful and intentional about the initial design of the architecture as subsequent changes were considered to be impossibly difficult. So, as a community, we developed techniques to assess architectures, … Read more
One of the topics many people fail to understand is the intimate relationship between business strategy and system and software architecture. This is the case for folks on the business side as well as many engineers. To illustrate this, one company I work with is involved in standardization in the context of home automation. It … Read more
In Swedish, there’s a saying that claims that there’s a fundamental difference between giving up and moving on. Giving up is to simply stop the fight even if it’s still worthwhile to continue to pursue a difficult goal. Moving on is concerned with realizing that the goal you’re pursuing is no longer relevant. The world … Read more
The last weeks, I traveled quite a bit (even ran a marathon!) and visited several of companies as well as talked to a lot of people in both industry and academia. Having had a few days to reflect on my experiences, I can’t shake an overall feeling that many are giving up on some of … Read more
One of the hardest things for us as human beings is to adequately balance focus on our own goals and drivers and the needs, requests and influences of others. We all know people who sail their own course no matter what others ask of them and we know people who are so responsive to others … Read more
One of my main pet peeves with Agile is that it, at heart, is a reactive paradigm. The mindset is that we’re in a “steady as she goes” state, there’s some event external to us and we react to it in an agile fashion. In many companies where the business side and the engineering side … Read more
