Presentation: Tweet"Architecting in the Gaps"

Most of us can generally agree what software design is, but software architecture has always been more difficult to pin down. Particularly since ivory tower architecture, with grand visions and designs on tablets of stone, deservedly died, it's been increasingly difficult to pin down software architecture. Perhaps it's just what the development team do every day? Or is it only the design at a certain point in the lifecycle? Or is it the design that isn't directly represented in the code? Or the design done by someone called "an architect"? As they like to say at the SEI, "all architecture is design, but not all design is architecture". But it's hard to find the point where one stops and the other starts.

In fact, I've found that we can find an answer to this question in many of the ideas that architects use every day: frameworks, brokers, layers, interfaces, messaging, connectors ... its all about the gaps! Architects spend most of their time worrying about things that fit in between the components that software designers create. The architecture is the glue that binds the work of software designers together into a resilient, flexible, scalable and ultimately useful system.

In this talk we'll explore the metaphor of "architecting in the gaps", show how it allows architecture work to be clearly identified, how the metaphor helps teams think about their architecture and work with architects, and what we should put in the gaps to create great systems.