4 ms·

We have a weekly meeting of a group of designated approvers for design docs.

by closeparen 4y ago

Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
That's really cool, but isn't that equivalent to having an Architect team, just without a name?
- closeparen 4y ago
  The legwork, thinking, and writing come from the software engineers who are also going to be building and maintaining the thing. The review simply verifies that their plan is reasonable and perhaps suggests some angles they hadn't thought about. Reviewers are engaged in the same kind of work as the people going up for review - which is how they are able to make useful suggestions. After the meeting, some will be going back to coding, others to investigate the alerts they just got paged for, others to design/UXR workshops, others to go run sprint planning, etc. I would expect an Architect team to deal directly with the product requirements, stakeholders, etc. and produce a design that they hand off to others to execute, while they move on to the next set of requirements. Architecture is part of the project lifecycle for everyone. This process is simply the architecture complement of code review, only slightly more formal.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
    What happens in case the design is actually highly incorrect, will the people restart the work from scratch? Regarding the Architecture team, that's literally what caused problems in so many companies, that's the definition of how to have bad architects: the architects are so disengaged with the system that they cannot make recommendations. An architect team should be highly integrated, participate in the coding aspect and only once something is shipped, moves on.
    - closeparen 4y ago
      We schedule follow up meetings with smaller groups of interested parties about the areas of controversy or deficiency. >An architect team should be highly integrated, participate in the coding aspect and only once something is shipped, moves on. At that point, why are they a separate role or team? That sounds pretty close to architecture being one of the responsibilities of the main development team.
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
        Because they have the experience on theirs. Having an integrated architecture team serves for training purposes and for overlooking the mistakes. At the same time, it helps keeping the architecture team up to date with the codebase. Why wouldn't you do that, if it's highly beneficial in both directions? The fact that a separate team does design work has been proven to be wrong, of course we shouldn't do that again
        closeparen 4y ago
        Someone who is functionally part of the development team but has more experience than others and some kind of supervisory capacity over technical direction is, in my world, a senior or staff engineer. Do you also have those? How are they different from architects?
        Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
        As simple as some engineers is specialized in React, some in Rails, some in Postgres, some in system design. Yes I'd agree it's a similar role, I'm just making a point of recognizing the specialization.
        closeparen 4y ago
        How are you going to design database schemas if you don't know Postgres? Controllers and models if you don't know Rails? Components if you don't know React? I don't think design and usage are such separate skillsets. Put another way, wouldn't you want the Postgres expert to design your Postgres schemas? Or the Rails expert to lay out your Rails application?

We have a weekly meeting of a group of designated approvers for design docs.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago

That's really cool, but isn't that equivalent to having an Architect team, just without a name?

closeparen 4y ago
The legwork, thinking, and writing come from the software engineers who are also going to be building and maintaining the thing. The review simply verifies that their plan is reasonable and perhaps suggests some angles they hadn't thought about. Reviewers are engaged in the same kind of work as the people going up for review - which is how they are able to make useful suggestions. After the meeting, some will be going back to coding, others to investigate the alerts they just got paged for, others to design/UXR workshops, others to go run sprint planning, etc. I would expect an Architect team to deal directly with the product requirements, stakeholders, etc. and produce a design that they hand off to others to execute, while they move on to the next set of requirements. Architecture is part of the project lifecycle for everyone. This process is simply the architecture complement of code review, only slightly more formal.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
  What happens in case the design is actually highly incorrect, will the people restart the work from scratch? Regarding the Architecture team, that's literally what caused problems in so many companies, that's the definition of how to have bad architects: the architects are so disengaged with the system that they cannot make recommendations. An architect team should be highly integrated, participate in the coding aspect and only once something is shipped, moves on.
  - closeparen 4y ago
    We schedule follow up meetings with smaller groups of interested parties about the areas of controversy or deficiency. >An architect team should be highly integrated, participate in the coding aspect and only once something is shipped, moves on. At that point, why are they a separate role or team? That sounds pretty close to architecture being one of the responsibilities of the main development team.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
      Because they have the experience on theirs. Having an integrated architecture team serves for training purposes and for overlooking the mistakes. At the same time, it helps keeping the architecture team up to date with the codebase. Why wouldn't you do that, if it's highly beneficial in both directions? The fact that a separate team does design work has been proven to be wrong, of course we shouldn't do that again
      - closeparen 4y ago
        Someone who is functionally part of the development team but has more experience than others and some kind of supervisory capacity over technical direction is, in my world, a senior or staff engineer. Do you also have those? How are they different from architects?
        Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
        As simple as some engineers is specialized in React, some in Rails, some in Postgres, some in system design. Yes I'd agree it's a similar role, I'm just making a point of recognizing the specialization.
        closeparen 4y ago
        How are you going to design database schemas if you don't know Postgres? Controllers and models if you don't know Rails? Components if you don't know React? I don't think design and usage are such separate skillsets. Put another way, wouldn't you want the Postgres expert to design your Postgres schemas? Or the Rails expert to lay out your Rails application?