Software Architecture and Decision-Making: Leveraging Leadership, Technology, and Product Management to Build Great Products

by Srinath Perera

Leverage leadership knowledge to make better software architecture decisions. Think deeply but implement slowly. The overarching goal of software systems (hence, for software architecture) is to build systems that meet quality standards and that provide the highest return on investment (ROI) in the long run or within a defined period of time. A great product requires a combination of technology, leadership, and product management (including UX). Leadership is primarily about managing uncertainty and making the right judgment. To build great products, technical leaders need to combine technology, leadership, and product management knowledge, and make the right decisions. Many technical mistakes come from the gap between knowledge about these three items and judgment. In Software Architecture and Decision-Making , Srinath Perera explains principles and concepts that software architects must understand deeply and how to employ those principles to manage uncertainty. The questions and principles discussed in this book help manage uncertainty while building software architecture and provide a framework for making decisions. This book is for all technical leaders in the software industry who make holistic judgments about the systems they build and for future leaders learning the craft. This definitive guide explains principles and concepts--technical and non-technical alike--that software architects, senior software engineers, and technical leads must understand to manage the inevitable uncertainty involved in building software systems and to drive success of the products for which they are responsible. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Genres: Software, Technology, Technical

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2023

Reviews

[Anatolij Grigorjev · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had no expectations picking up this book and it pleasantly surprised me
The writing here is precise, pragmatic and actionable. These are not words you will often see used to describe software architecture books.
Yes, if we want to be academic about it, we can pontificate till the cows come home, how it "all depends" and how our decisions must be"deferred to later" and this and that and the third thing. But none of that gets stuff done.

The book immediately sets up the guiding principles and questions which will guide you picking solutions to your software system problems.
The writer breaks down common solutions to many of these problems - and always provides personal advice based on years of experience about what solution will work best as the starting point for a given context. No approach is derided for being "unclean" or "hacky" or "too manual" - everything is a tool in the toolbelt and a good solution architect knows when to pull out the right one. Each chapter ends with what is expected in this space from you as the architect, the technical leader of whatever it is being developed.

If I was tasked to help somebody evolve from a lower level task-a-day programmer to a solution architecture owner and they were only allowed to read one book to do it - this is the book I would pick.

[Christoph Kappel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really good book about related questions and especially about the hidden costs of big decisions. The level varies, sometimes it is more from a macro from and sometimes it goes down to alignment of memory and context switching, but still pretty worthwhile.

Having the list of questions handy as a red line through the book is nice, but on the n-th repetition you just skip it though..