Neal Ford

Software Architecture Fundamentals

9:00 AM MDT

The job Software Architect places in the top ten of most annual surveys of best jobs, yet no clear path exists from Developer to Architect. Why aren’t there more books and training materials to fill this demand? First, software architecture is a massive multidisciplinary subject, covering many roles and responsibilities, making it difficult to teach because so much context is required for the interesting subjects. Second, it’s a fast moving discipline, where entire suites of best practices become obsolete overnight. This workshop provides the fundamentals to transition from developer to architect, or to help “accidental” architects.

Part 1 of this workshop focuses on the many elements required to make the journey from developer to architect, covering process topics like the impact of Continuous Delivery on architecture, technical subjects like application, integration, and enterprise architecture, and soft skills. While we can’t make you an architect overnight, we can start you on the journey with a map and a good compass.
Part 1, From Developer to Architect, covers:

• Soft skills
• Continuous Delivery
• Understanding large codebases
• Architecture patterns
• Architecture anti-patterns
• Integration architecture overview
• Introduction to enterprise architecture

Part two of this workshop takes a deeper dive in application, integration, and enterprise architecture topics, including evaluating architectures via Agile ATAM, the impacts of continuous delivery on architecture, comparing architectures, SOA, SOAP, and REST, integration hubs, and enterprise architecture approaches and strategies.

Part 2, Deeper Dive, covers:

• Continuous Delivery for architects
• Applying abstraction
• Comparing architectures
• SOAP vs REST/ WS vs Messaging
• Integration hubs
• Enterprise architecture approaches and strategies
• Comparing service-based architectures

To fully leverage knowledge, you need application. The last part of this workshop uses the public domain Architectural Katas exercise to apply learnings from the first two parts.

Continuous Delivery Workshop, part 1 of 3: Deployment Pipelines

8:30 AM MDT

The first part of the Continuous Delivery workshop covers the differences between continuous integration, continuous deployment, and continuous delivery). It also introduces the deployment pipeline_, along with usage, patterns, and anti-patterns. This part concludes with some applied engineering principles.

Releasing software to actual users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process. This workshop sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours—sometimes even minutes—no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base. The workshop materials are derived from the best selling book Continuous Delivery and creating in collaboration with the authors and other of my ThoughtWorks colleagues. Continuous Delivery details how to get fast feedback on the production readiness of your application every time there is a change—to code, infrastructure, or configuration.

The first part of the workshop describes the technical differences between related topics such as continuous integration, continuous deployment, and continuous delivery. At the heart of the workshop is a pattern called the deployment pipeline, which involves the creation of a living system that models your organization's value stream for delivering software. I discuss the various stages, how triggering works, patterns and anti-patterns, and how to pragmatically determine what “production ready” means. This session also covers some agile principles espoused by the Continuous Delivery book, including new perspectives on things like developer workstations and configuration management.

Continuous Delivery Workshop, part 2 of 3: Testing, Synergistic Practices, and Deployment

10:30 AM MDT

Continuous Delivery relies on a variety of interlocking engineering practices to work efficiently; this session covers three related topics. First, I cover the role of testing and the testing quadrant. Second, I specifically cover version control usage and offer alternatives to feature branching like toggle and branch by abstraction. Third, I describe some incremental release strategies, along with their impact on other stages of project lifecycle.

Releasing software to actual users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process. This workshop sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours—sometimes even minutes—no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base. The workshop materials are derived from the best selling book Continuous Delivery and creating in collaboration with the authors and other of my ThoughtWorks colleagues. Continuous Delivery details how to get fast feedback on the production readiness of your application every time there is a change—to code, infrastructure, or configuration.

Continuous Delivery relies on a variety of interlocking engineering practices to work efficiently; this session covers three related topics. First, I cover the role of testing and the testing quadrant, including the audience and engineering practices around different types of tests. I also cover some best practices around testing, including testing ratios, code coverage, and other topics. Second, I specifically cover version control usage and offer alternatives to feature branching like toggle and branch by abstraction. Generally, I talk about building synergistic engineering practices that complement rather than conflict one another. In particular, I discuss why feature branching harms three other engineering practices and describe alternatives. Third, I describe some incremental release strategies, along with their impact on other stages of project lifecycle.

Continuous Delivery Workshop, part 3 of 3: Infrastructure and Data

1:00 PM MDT

Two big stumbling blocks for Continuous Delivery adaptation are interactions with operations and the keepers of data. First in this session, I cover operations, DevOps, and programmatic control of infrastructure. Second, I discuss how to incorporate databases and DBA's into the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery process.

Releasing software to actual users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process. This workshop sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours—sometimes even minutes—no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base. The workshop materials are derived from the best selling book Continuous Delivery and creating in collaboration with the authors and other of my ThoughtWorks colleagues. Continuous Delivery details how to get fast feedback on the production readiness of your application every time there is a change—to code, infrastructure, or configuration.

Two big stumbling blocks for Continuous Delivery adaptation are interactions with operations and the keepers of data. First in this session, I cover operations, DevOps, and programmatic control of infrastructure using tools like Puppet and Chef. I also discuss the explosion of tool alternatives in this space, and cover some current-day best practices. Second, I discuss how to incorporate databases and DBA's into the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery process. This includes database migrations, strategies for enhancing collaboration between application development and data, and database refactoring techniques.

Keynote: Why does Yesterday's Best Practice Become Tomorrow's Antipattern?

7:30 PM MDT

Modern software development exhibits a curious trend: Yesterday’s Best Practice Becomes Tomorrow’s Antipattern. Why? Haven’t we learned enough about software development to avoid this trap over and over? This keynote investigates why this trend continues, and offers some advice for enduring practices.

Modern software development exhibits a curious trend: Yesterday’s Best Practice Becomes Tomorrow’s Antipattern. Why? EJB and SOA were once Best Practices, now shunned as anti-patterns. This keynote investigates why this trend continues, including increased tech stack complexity, primordial abstraction ooze, code reuse abuse, strangling dependency management, and the fundamental dynamic equilibrium of the software development ecosystem. I also investigate How to Avoid Yesterday’s Best Practice from Becoming Tomorrow’s Antipattern, including domain centric architectures, immutabile infrastructure, evolutionary architecture, incremental architectural change, and how to favor evolvability over predictability. Also includes figurative and literal dumpster fires.

Blockchain Beyond Bitcoin

8:30 PM MDT

This session takes a deep dive on the design and implementation of the proof of work algorithm at the heart of most cryptocurrencies, along with details of how difficult it is to spoof, how transactions work, what happens when all the coins have been mined, and other practical considerations.

Bitcoin has generated a lot of both negative and positive buzz, but it’s important to differentiate between the different aspects of cryptocurrency: the algorithm, the commodity, and the implications. This session takes a deep dive on the design and implementation of the proof of work algorithm at the heart of most cryptocurrencies, along with details of how difficult it is to spoof, how transactions work, what happens when all the coins have been mined, and other practical considerations. I also discuss the use of the proof of work algorithm to implement a wide variety of other types of distributed trust: legal documents, voting systems, and a modification of the entire commerce structure that has existed since medieval times. Don’t be confused by the hype around specific implementations: this algorithm will have wide reaching, tectonic repercussions.

Continuous Delivery for Architects Workshop

9:00 AM MDT

Architecture doesn't exist in a vacuum, a painful lesson developers who built logically sound but operationally cumbersome architectures learned. Continuous Delivery is a process for automating the production readiness of your application every time a change occurs–to code, infrastructure, or configuration. Some architectures and practices yield code that works better in this environment. This session takes a deep dive into the intersection of the architect role and the engineering practices in Continuous Delivery.

Yesterday's best practice is tomorrow's anti-pattern. Architecture doesn't exist in a vacuum, a painful lesson developers who built logically sound but operationally cumbersome architectures learned. Continuous Delivery is a process for automating the production readiness of your application every time a change occurs–to code, infrastructure, or configuration. Some architectures and practices yield code that works better in this environment. This session takes a deep dive into the intersection of the architect role and the engineering practices in Continuous Delivery. I first set context for the information you must master before delving into the nuances of modern architectural concerns. I discuss the role of metrics to understand code, how Domain Driven Design's Bounded Context reifies in architecture, how to reduce intra-component/service coupling, the tension between coupling and cohesion, microservices architectures, and other engineering techniques.

This workshop allows you to apply techniques either against a sample codebase…or bring one of your own. Suggested exercises include using metrics to learn more about the structure of your class, how to determine how to partition a mono-lithic architecture into a service-based ond, and Architectural Katas with Devops added.

Continuous Delivery for Architects Workshop

11:00 AM MDT

Architecture doesn't exist in a vacuum, a painful lesson developers who built logically sound but operationally cumbersome architectures learned. Continuous Delivery is a process for automating the production readiness of your application every time a change occurs–to code, infrastructure, or configuration. Some architectures and practices yield code that works better in this environment. This session takes a deep dive into the intersection of the architect role and the engineering practices in Continuous Delivery.

Yesterday's best practice is tomorrow's anti-pattern. Architecture doesn't exist in a vacuum, a painful lesson developers who built logically sound but operationally cumbersome architectures learned. Continuous Delivery is a process for automating the production readiness of your application every time a change occurs–to code, infrastructure, or configuration. Some architectures and practices yield code that works better in this environment. This session takes a deep dive into the intersection of the architect role and the engineering practices in Continuous Delivery. I first set context for the information you must master before delving into the nuances of modern architectural concerns. I discuss the role of metrics to understand code, how Domain Driven Design's Bounded Context reifies in architecture, how to reduce intra-component/service coupling, the tension between coupling and cohesion, microservices architectures, and other engineering techniques.

This workshop allows you to apply techniques either against a sample codebase…or bring one of your own. Suggested exercises include using metrics to learn more about the structure of your class, how to determine how to partition a mono-lithic architecture into a service-based ond, and Architectural Katas with Devops added.

Hypothesis/Data Driven Development using Feature Toggles

3:15 PM MDT

Hypothesis and data driven development ties together current thinking about requirements, Continuous Delivery, DevOps, modern architecture, and engineering techniques to help rethink building software.

Agile development claims to abhor “Big Design Up Front”…yet what is that giant backlog building session but BDUF in other clothing? Back in the olden days of software development, we were forced to speculate on what users want, then build it. We were basically running a buffet. But what if we could switch to à la carte? With modern engineering practices like Continuous Delivery, we can shift our perspective and start building by hypothesis rather than speculation. This talk shows the full spectrum of software development, from ideation through execution and deployment, through the lens of modern software engineering practices. I discuss building a platform using feature toggles, canary releases, A/B testing, and other modern DevOps tools to allow you to run experiments to see what your users really want. By building a platform for experimentation, product development shifts from up-front guessing to market driven. This talk unifies the practices of modern architecture, DevOps, and Continuous Delivery to provide a new approach to feature development. This talk also demonstrates how to undertake major architectural restructuring with zero regression failures by relying on data and the scientific method.

Comparing Service-based Architectures

5:00 PM MDT

This session compares Service-oriented, Service-based, and Micro-service architectures, describing the problem each is designed to solve, differences and similarities, variants and hybrids, and engineering practices.

Microservice architectures are quite popular, described as “SOA done correctly”. But what are the real differences between SOA, Microservice, and service-based architectures? What about middle ground between the shared everything of SOA versus shared nothing of microservices? This talk explores the similarities and differences between various service-oriented architectural styles. I describe the characteristics of SOA, microservices, and hybrid service-based architectures, along with the considerations and constraints for each. I also discuss specific engineering practices, orchestration styles, reuse strategies, and migrating from monolithic applications to service-based or microservice architectures. No one architecture can solve every problem, and many projects take on more complexity than necessary by choosing the wrong paradigm.

Clojure Workshop

9:00 AM MDT

In an increasingly crowded field of languages, Clojure stands alone. It is a dynamic, functional, high performance dialect of Lisp that runs on both the JVM and CLR. The creator cast aside assumptions from both the Lisp and Java communities to create a remarkable language implementation.

This workshop introduces Clojure to Java developers who might not have seen a Lisp and don’t yet understand why that’s such an advantage. I introduce the language syntax (what little there is of it), cover interoperability with Java, macros, mutlti-methods, and more. I also cover the functional aspects of Clojure, showing its powerful immutable data structures, working with threads and concurrency, and sequences. Beyond just showing syntax, I also show how to build real applications in Clojure, and give you a chance to do the same. Attending this workshop shows enough to pique your interest and show why many of the people who were interested in Java in 1996 are interested in Clojure now.

Clojure Workshop

10:45 AM MDT

In an increasingly crowded field of languages, Clojure stands alone. It is a dynamic, functional, high performance dialect of Lisp that runs on both the JVM and CLR. The creator cast aside assumptions from both the Lisp and Java communities to create a remarkable language implementation.

This workshop introduces Clojure to Java developers who might not have seen a Lisp and don’t yet understand why that’s such an advantage. I introduce the language syntax (what little there is of it), cover interoperability with Java, macros, mutlti-methods, and more. I also cover the functional aspects of Clojure, showing its powerful immutable data structures, working with threads and concurrency, and sequences. Beyond just showing syntax, I also show how to build real applications in Clojure, and give you a chance to do the same. Attending this workshop shows enough to pique your interest and show why many of the people who were interested in Java in 1996 are interested in Clojure now.