Way Forward in 2007

I am not the right person to predict the way forward in 2007. During last quarter, I got little time to go through buzzwords. Hope, I will find some way to reduce meetings in this year.

I hope that Architect's world and I will understand the basic principles better in 2007 and onwards -

1) Loose coupling and Reuse - Will adopt SOA to push loose coupling and reuse.

2) Abstraction - Add more XML files to abstract things.

3) Layered architecture – Vertical silos will break to give way to horizontal layered architecture in different domains.

4) Segregation of concerns - Cross cutting open sources like Acegi will gain momentum.

5) Cohesion - More companies will consolidate/merge to make impact especially small companies working in niche areas.

6) DRY - Move from code reuse to component reuse to service reuse.

7) Add more indirections - More virtualizations at different layers like Data and Servers.

New Year Wish Tag 2007

A new blog tag to share the New Year Wish List.

Wish you all HAPPY NEW YEAR !!

My wish list for new year -

1. To improve my leadership and negotiation skills
2. To maintain work life balance in New Year.
3. To visit at least two new places and make at least ten new friends.

No rules for number of New Year Wishes and number of bloggers to be tagged. I am starting my New Year Wish Tag with my favourite bloggers

Todd Biske, Sam Lowe and James McGovern

Hope and Wish to receive support from them. One more wish ;))

Does I deserve to be called an ARCHITECT ?

When a IT professional deserves to be called an Architect? I am trying to list down few attributes of an Architect. I am not trying to find specific attributes for product, business, information, technical, software, specialist, application, system architects and whatsoever.

Its a fare trial to find out generic attributes, when a software professional is mature enough to be called an Architect.

1) When everyone around is in hurry to find the solution. Architect understands the problem first, its origin and future roadmap. See things from 10,000 ft. Afterwards, comes up with solution with blink in his mind. Its time to build consensus around the solution.

2) It is not based on number of years of experince. It is based when you start thinking at abstract level with very ambiguous information. You don't complain that information is not enough to take decision and try to dig it out.

3) He keeps track of emerging technologies. Understand when they are ready for enterprise.

4) He follows process and influence others to follow process. Believes in quality of work.

5) He is capable of taking difficult decisions on behalf of others and have courage to own it.

6) Able to understand, create and communicate the solution to team in their language (most of time UML/patterns).

7) He understands the concepts and principles of loose coupling, high cohesion, abstraction, encapsulation, information hiding, polymorphism. All these are independent of technology used in project.

Mission and Vision of this Site

Vision (Long term)
As url name suggests - EA Group : A EA community site to collaborate and learn from each other experiences.

Mission (Short term)
1) To get listed on most of Enterprise Architect sites like James McGovern, James Tarbell, Sam Lowe, Brenda Michelson etc
2) Add lot of interesting things, so that it becomes worth visiting it.