Developing Software in medium sized or big projects always raises questions about architectural work. Based on the experience gained during architecture reviews of multiple software systems, this session provides possible answers to some of these questions: Who is responsible for developing the software architecture? How can multiple project members or even multiple teams work on architectural decisions without sacrificing conceptual integrity or propagating „big design up-front“-approaches? How can we ensure that the developed concepts and designs are fulfilling the quality requirements of the project as a whole? And finally: How can we ensure that these concepts are feasible and realizable within the set constraints?
Methodical and recurring execution of architecture reviews is an effective and essential step here. This session compares well known methods and practices for architecture reviews, but it does not stop there. Instead it starts off by introducing some real life examples of architectural work, illustrating common problems and challenges. Based on these examples, the session carves out the techniques and practices that are most profitable. Not every project needs sophisticated, full blown evaluation methods like ATAM and CBAM or heavy architecture review tools, but the core chunks of methodology behind these concepts are almost always beneficial: They improve the architecture work, help to achieve the systems quality attributes and provide transparency for the major stakeholders.