I truly believe that a lightweight, pragmatic approach to software architecture is pivotal to successfully delivering software, and that it can complement agile approaches rather than compete against them. After all, a good architecture enables agility and this doesn't happen by magic. But the people in our industry often tend to have a very different view. Historically, software architecture has been a discipline steeped in academia and, I think, subsequently feels inaccessible to many software developers. It's also not a particularly trendy topic when compared to [microservices|Node.js|Docker|insert other new thing here].
I've been distilling the essence of software architecture over the past few years, helping software teams to understand and introduce it into the way that they work. And, for me, the absolute essence of software architecture is about building firm foundations; both in terms of the team that is building the software and for the software itself. It's about technical leadership, creating a shared vision and stacking the chances of success in your favour.
I'm delighted to have been invited back to ASAS 2014 and my opening keynote is about what a software team can do in order to create those firm foundations. I'm also going to talk about some of the concrete examples of what I've done in the past, illustrating how I apply a minimal set of software architecture practices in the real world to take an idea through to working software. I'll also share some examples of where this hasn't exactly gone to plan too! I look forward to seeing you in a few weeks.