Month: September 2024

Context - Very Large Software Projects For this article, I am going to define "very large" as any project involving upward of a hundred people over several years. I've had the privilege to work on four such projects in my career, pretty much non-stop since 2007. The latest one is in an organisation that implements SAFe™ with three levels (portfolio, ART and team). I've worked as a system architect in an ART since 2017, although normally doing more technical work and sharing the role with a second architect who focuses more on the business side of things (I still love to program and still love hard technical challenges). We currently have two architects per ART, with 75 people per ART and two ARTs working on the company's number one modernisation project. Challenges in Communication A big challenge that we have faced is how to ensure that Product Managers (PMs) and System Architects (SAs) are involved in the analysis and decision making processes, without becoming bottlenecks and reducing the rate of flow within the organisation. Taking a step back, it isn't just a challenge of keeping those two roles in the loop, rather, keeping all stakeholders in the loop. Examples: How can we involve the business stakeholders, so that they can understand the impact of requirements on large software systems, e.g. in order to understand why a project costs what it does? How can we make sure that the right people in the organisation are involved in discussions and ultimately decisions?…

Read more