Nathaniel Schutta

Building An Architecture Community

How is your architecture group perceived in your organization? Be honest now…is it seen as a group of ivory tower dilettantes intent on saying NO while filling a whiteboard with boxes and arrows? Or is it seen as a key component in developing rock solid software? If it's the former, how do you shift things towards the latter? Even if everyone thinks the world of the architecture team, odds are you have more work than you can handle and a bunch of tech leads that may (or may not) be thinking of all the right ilities. How do we reach out to them, mentor them, and bring them in to the fold?

Communication for Architects

At the end of the day, an architect's primary job is to communicate. Not only do we need to make sure our teams understand the design of the system well enough to implement it, we must be able to explain our decisions to an audience that isn't impressed with how many TLAs you can rattle off in one sentence. Successful architects need to seamlessly transition from in depth technical conversations to budget meetings to discussions with end users adjusting the message to fit the audience.

Modeling for Architects

In some organizations, architects are dismissed as people that draw box and arrow diagrams - the dreaded whiteboard architect. While we don't want to foster that stereotype, it is important for an architect to be able to construct basic architectural diagrams. An architect must also be able to separate the wheat from the chaff eliminating those models that don't help tell the story while fully leveraging those that do.

Modeling for Architects

In some organizations, architects are dismissed as people that draw box and arrow diagrams - the dreaded whiteboard architect. While we don't want to foster that stereotype, it is important for an architect to be able to construct basic architectural diagrams. An architect must also be able to separate the wheat from the chaff eliminating those models that don't help tell the story while fully leveraging those that do.

Reviewing Architectures

Good architects are, almost by definition, good story tellers. And while good communication skills are vital to success as an architect, so too is an ability to constructively critique an architecture. In this talk, we'll explore why reviews are important and what it takes to perform them well. Additionally, we'll talk about the importance of planning and preparation in conducting a successful review.

I'm an Architect, Now What? Workshop

Becoming a software architect is a longed-for career upgrade for many software developers. While the job title suggests a work day focused on technical decision-making, the reality is quite different. In this workshop, software architect Nathaniel Schutta constructs a real world job description in which communication trumps coding.

• Discover the skill sets needed to juggle multiple priorities, meetings, and time demands
• Learn why your best team leadership tool is not a hammer, but a shared cup of coffee
• Hear the best ways to give and take criticism
• Understand the necessity of writing effective email and formal architecture documents
• Get tips for delivering confident career-building presentations to any audience
• Review essential techniques for stakeholder management and relationship building
• Explore the critical needs for architecture reviews and an effective process for conducting them

Architecting for the ilities

As a developer, your focus was squarely on the “functional requirements” aka the business capabilities your application must meet. But once you step in the architect role, you discover a world inhabited by “the ilities” otherwise known as the non functional or quality attributes of a software system. But how do we know which ilities matter and which ones don't? And much as we may want to turn every knob up to 11, many ilities are inversely related - maximize one and you by definition minimize another.