In early days of software development little thought was given to how the software applications and systems we built were architected. There were several reasons with this: firstly, software development being new, the style hadn’t been thought of, and secondly we didn’t realize how important architecture was to the cost of maintaining our applications and systems. Upon sober reflection, we probably needs to have foreseen the necessity for planned architecture and architects because building software isn’t radically distinctive from building any structure, for instance buildings and bridges. We can’t return back and undo the damage done by the possible lack of foresight that generated badly architected applications and systems but as project managers we could avoid causeing the mistake in our next software development project.
Today most organizations whose core competencies include software development recognize the importance of architecture to their business and have satisfied this need by creating the role of architect and making this person accountable for the architecture of all of the software applications and systems they develop. Even organizations whose core competencies don’t include software development, but who have invested heavily in IT, have created this role. These individuals might be called the Chief Architect, Head Architect, or Strategic Architect. Wikipedia identifies 3 different kinds of architect depending on the scope of these responsibilities: the enterprise architect who is accountable for all an organization’s applications and systems, the answer architect who is accountable for the architecture of a method comprised of more than one applications and hardware platforms, and the applying architect whose responsibility is limited by one application. top Miami architects The category and number of architects will often be constrained by how big is the organization and the amount of applications and systems it supports. Whatever the organization you work for calls them, the software architect includes a key role to play on your own software project.
Your job as project manager of a pc software development project, where a pc software architect is in position, is to ensure that their work is properly defined and organized which means your project receives maximum benefit from their expertise. If the organization does not have an architect in position you must identify someone on your own team to fill that role. What is not acceptable would be to plan the project without any acknowledgment of the necessity or importance of the architect. This role requires as much knowledge of the machine components as you possibly can, including software and hardware knowledge. It also requires deep technical knowledge of the technology used, both hardware and software and strong analytical skills. The individual (other than a pc software architect) who almost certainly possesses a expertise similar to this one, is a company or systems analyst. Dependant on the size and complexity of the present system, and your project, existing skill sets might not be sufficient to generally meet your project’s needs. You can find ample training opportunities available so choose one that a lot of closely suits your preferences and have your candidate attend. If your project has adequate budget to cover the training, fine. If not, remember that the expertise acquired by the trainee is likely to be open to the organization after your project is completed and your project should not have to bear the total cost of the training.
Since you have a qualified software architect engaged for your project, you will need to plan that person’s tasks to take maximum advantage of these skills. I will suggest engaging the architect as in the beginning in the project as you possibly can so that they’ll influence the definition of the applying or system being developed. The team that defines the company requirements to your project is likely to be from the company side of the organization and have deep knowledge of how the company runs but little knowledge of the present systems and technical options that come with the hardware and software that’ll deliver the solution. Having a pc software architect available during requirements gathering exercises will help you define requirements that leverage existing system and solution platform strengths and avoid weaknesses. Leaving their input till a later phase exposes your project to the chance of re-engineering the answer to match existing architecture or avoid solution weaknesses, following the fact. Involve the software architect in requirements gathering exercises as a consultant or SME (subject matter expert) who can point out risks in defining requirements and offer alternative solutions.
The important thing deliverable your architect is accountable for is the architectural drawing. This is simply not actually a drawing but a mix of drawings and text. The drawings will represent the different the different parts of the machine and their relationship to 1 another. The writing will describe data elements, relations between various architectural elements, and any standards designers must adhere to. The drawing may be a new someone to represent a new system, or it could be an upgrade of a preexisting drawing to reflect the changes to a preexisting system made by your project. The development of the architectural drawing is the first design activity in your project schedule. The drawing is utilized in exactly the same fashion that engineering staff and skilled craftsmen use an architectural drawing of a building or bridge.
Analysts and programmers will utilize the Business Requirements Document (BRD) to tell them what features and functions to create and the architectural drawing to tell them how their software must fit along with other software in the machine, any constraints the machine places on the design, standards the brand new software must meet, and what critical data elements look like. The information in this drawing depends on the answer chosen, the hardware chosen, the present system and the complexity of the project. As an example, projects utilizing an Object Oriented solution could have 4 layers: a user interface layer (the layer the consumer sees), a software layer (where the task is done), a domain layer (where business logic is applied), and an infrastructure layer (for logging messaging, etc.). Other solutions may call for more or fewer layers.
Software development projects which count on a relational database to store and retrieve large volumes of data could have a database architect who is accountable for the style of the database. The database architect should be considered a member of your project team and their design must be coordinated with the machine architecture so your data elements in the architectural drawing are defined exactly the same way since they are in the database’s data dictionary. Database design is important to system performance. Poor database design, or database design which does not support the applications deploying it, will deliver a method with poor performance so database design and architectural design must certanly be inputs to one another to yield a well integrated system with the performance characteristics required.
The architectural drawing must certanly be approved by the project sponsor, project steering committee and the organization’s enterprise architect/chief architect/head architect where that individual isn’t the architect on your own team. Oftentimes people other than another architect won’t have the ability to determine whether the drawing contains all the data required by the project, or whether the machine design is sound. They will have a way to ascertain that all category of information has been addressed and that the drawing meets any requirements defined because of it in the Project Charter, Statement of Work (SOW), or scope statement. After the drawing has been approved it ought to be communicated to the analysts that are accountable for producing design specifications.