large 24 7 systems and agile soft dev - shanghai aha conference

Large 24 / 7 systems and Agile Soft. Dev.

Old story, new story, tips

Viktor Grgic @vgrgic Odd-e Hong Kong Blog: leanarch.eu odd-e.com http://less.works

Gartner says…

• Bimodal IT is the future- 2 distinct IT methodologies in the same

company- “Agile IT” teams for fast-changing stuff- “Traditional IT” for doing things right the first

time.

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Euhmm……No!

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Large software projects today

• ...are replacing something old for new.• Many of them have single goal: Replace outdated

technology with new one.• Many of them are huge investments with long

term promises of so called flexibility in future.• ...and if your large project is none of these, then

you’re maybe creating a christmas tree.Looks nice, but it is dead very soon.

• …or your project is small and delivers value

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Some nice False Dichotomies(fallacy of the false alternative)

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“You can’t simply start coding, therefore you always have some up-front design.”

“Developers don’t care and are incapable of caring about architecture, because they need to focus on coding”

“Agile / Scrum, that is something for frontend apps, not for 24/7 business critical systems”

We need to be more Agile

We need more architecture

“Some things cannot and should not change”

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The biggest problem in software architecture is that we think we know

what we are doing.

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Large software

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Viktor Grgic @vgrgic Odd-e Hong Kong Blog: leanarch.eu odd-e.com http://less.works 9

Great Mosque of Djenné, Mali ruins 1828

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Great Mosque of Djenné rebuilt 1895

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Great Mosque of Djenné 1910

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Everyone is

involved

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About 7 years ago...

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Port of Rotterdam, Project HaMIS 1. Replace outdated traffic management system

2. Support the port of Rotterdam expansion

24/7 system for traffic management, transport, environmental safety and crisis management.

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New (as defined about 6 years ago)

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Lots of documents

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Migration Plan

ArchitectureVision

OperationsVision

....

QAVision

Blueprint

Referencedata

Vision

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100+ identified use cases

Project Start Architecture Q&A

department

Architecture with 4 layers & 6 subsystems

6 architects

800+ architectural

decisions

RUP and Scrum but

BPEL process server

We just need...

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1 Use Case in 6 months

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(Re)Started

• Ship inspections process• Little risk• Significant business value• Migration stuff completely postponed• Agile / Scrum introduction• One sprint later, useful functions delivered in

production

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Optimize the whole

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Marketing

User / Business

Requirements gathering

Architecture

Planning

Analysis

Development

TestingDelivering

...has a challenge

Leadtime

Department 1 Department 2 Department 3

Department 4

Department 5

Department 6

Department 7Department 8

Agile team

Agile teamAgile team

Agile team

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Product Vision Box

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Self-designed teams

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See LeSS.works if you want to know more

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Architecting

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Open space sessions

Knowledge sharing

Documentation is Wiki filled by “harvesting” the

knowledge

Standardization is discovered and not

predefined

Just-in-timejust-enough

Continuous refactoring towards

better designArchitecture principles:

Simplicity and design for change

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Business processes?

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Technical debt

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So, did we paid this debt back ???

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Continuous Architecting

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Things that matter

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Multilayered Domain-Driven DesignSOA

SOAP

Frameworks

Micro-services

Simplicity

Business-driven

everything

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What was my role?

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Management: ”…but who is accountable?”

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Welcome to double legacy

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Which path to choose?

• Should we do all reporting first in the new system?

• Which part of the system should we replace first?• How do we prevent a big bang?• Where to start?• We followed ships in harbour!

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Any decision that can be postponed is postponed

...also the migration path

…but, this is not easy

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Migration = Strangulation

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HaMIS (new)IVS (old)

User

Businessevent 1

Businessevent 1

Businessevent 2

Businessevent 2

data not yet managed in HaMIS

"The most important reason to consider a strangler application over a cut-over rewrite is reduced risk.” - Martin Fowler, StranglerApplication

24/7 system Every 2 weeks in production

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http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/StranglerApplication.html


We banned terms:Generic or Reusable

on every level

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We banned premature generalisation

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Why Windows 10 instead 9 ???

“Microsoft dev here, the internal rumours are that early testing revealed just how many third party products that had code of the form

if(version.StartsWith("Windows 9")) { /* 95 and 98 */ } else {

and that this was the pragmatic solution to avoid that.”

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Aren’t you creating a mess?

• One team delivers the simplest possible solution• Another team delivers another similar even

simpler possible solution :-)• ...and maybe third one.• Then, we get together and talk about what you

learned and which one is really the best in this context.

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Examples

• Data model with production data is gradually extended and continually refactored

• IBM Websphere replaced by JBoss• User interface redesigned 2 or more times• SOAP replaced by binary Hessian• Core domain model concepts (gradually)

redesigned: inspection checklist, vessel visit vs. vessel

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Lessons learned

• Never stop delivering business value.• Deal with migration gradually / strangulation• Everything in software can be soft even data /

domain model!• Trust in business / context driven approach above

standard / generic solutions• Involve everyone to solve complex problems• Don’t get stuck in complexities of architectural

B.S.

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6 years later

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Then

6 months delivery time for large features

“Documents”-based collaboration business / IT

Dedicated operations team - 6 people + on average 5 developers fixing issues full time

Many architects, analysts, QA, “coordinators”

Very displeased business

Now

More than 100 sprints every 2 weeks new features / intensive collaboration

No dedicated operations team

Production issues involving code change solved in 1 hour!

One of 4 development teams responsible for operations, 30% of time actually spend on operations.

Architects, analysts, QA, OPs,… part of cross-functional teams

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“Everybody, all together, early on” James O. Coplien

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Want to know more?:less.works

Blog: leanarch.eu

Tomorrow:Collaborative Visualisation

workshop47

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large 24 7 systems and agile soft dev - shanghai aha conference

Documents

vgrgic odde hong kong

tipsviktor grgic

changeviktor grgic

value3viktor grgic

involvedviktor grgic

years ago21viktor grgic

large project

software architecture