Agile2013

Agility is about moving fast and this requires good communication. A consistent, shared vision is essential in order for teams to push in the same direction, but it's surprising that many agile teams struggle to effectively communicate the architecture of the software they are building. As an industry we do have the Unified Modeling Language (UML), yet many people favour informal boxes and lines sketches instead. The problem is that such diagrams rarely make any sense, usually need a narrative to accompany them and ultimately slow the team down. Although we can argue whether UML offers an effective way to communicate software architecture, that's often irrelevant because many teams have already thrown out UML or simply don't know it. Abandoning UML is one thing but, in the race for agility, many software development teams have lost the ability to communicate visually.

This session is aimed at everybody involved in the software development process and is about improving architectural communication in an agile environment. You'll see some patterns and anti-patterns related to NoUML diagrams and you'll learn some simple techniques for communicating software architecture using informal sketches.

Simon regularly gives software architecture classes around Europe and this topic is a core part of his workshops.