Blog & Articles by Dr. Gernot Starke

Blog Post

Canvas 101

Steckbriefe sind kompakt, strukturiert und liefern gezielte Informationen – ideal, um sich schnell einen Überblick zu verschaffen. Ein Canvas funktioniert genauso, nur für IT-Projekte. Ob Geschäftsmodell, Architektur oder Teamkommunikation: Mit einem Canvas halten Sie die wesentlichen Aspekte strukturiert und übersichtlich fest.

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Fundamentals of software architecture: Part 5

In this (fifth) installment of the mini-series on software architecture, we leave behind the realm of small to medium-sized systems and take a look at large, risky, and complex projects. In other words, we examine the “scaling” of the role of software architecture.

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Fundamentals of software architecture: Part 4

Who does it?

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Fundamentals of software architecture: Part 3

In this part of the mini-series, we explain everything you need to do when creating software architecture. First, we take a look at the necessary tasks and activities. Then we discuss some of the skills and capabilities required for these architecture tasks.

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Fundamentals of software architecture: Part 2

Welcome to the second part in the mini-series on software architecture.

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Fundamentals of software architecture: Part 1

Building, purpose, aesthetics

Blog Post

Concise Documentation – Revisited

You think architecture documentation is cumbersome and takes a long time to create? We will prove you wrong.

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Babylon as a Feature

The Tower of Babylon is a myth meant to explain why the world’s peoples speak different languages. In modern IT systems, it’s often a requirement to support multiple languages. Such internationalization (i18n for short) is a tough challenge – and this post describes a simple solution to just the tiny part of multilingual documents. Our solution combines the simplicity of the plain-text format AsciiDoc with a simple yet versatile build script to support multiple languages (like EN and DE) and multiple output formats (like PDF and HTML).

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Shortcomings of ISO 25010
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Pixie und der Sumpf

Die Cloud … das sind die Computer von jemand anderem. Die Strom benötigen, installiert und konfiguriert werden müssen. Obwohl wir Container oder VMs nach jedem Gebrauch (fachgerecht) entsorgen (sprich: löschen) – die darunter liegenden echten Computer sind ja immer noch da. Auch in Cloud-Native Zeiten solltest Du wissen, wie ein Computer überhaupt in einen betriebsfähigen Zustand und zu einem Betriebssystem kommt. Das Fachwort dafür lautet bare metal provisioning, und hat rein gar nichts mit Provisionszahlungen zu tun.

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Sparsame Dokumentation

Ich weiß – Dokumentation ist nicht Ihr Lieblingsthema. Deswegen bekommen Sie hier ein paar Tipps für schmerzfreie Dokumentation. Die hier vorgestellten Ideen sparen Ihnen wertvolle Zeit, sowohl bei Erstellung als auch Pflege der Dokumentation. Sie funktionieren für jede Art von Softwaresystem, unabhängig von Werkzeugen, Technologien und Entwicklungsansätzen.

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1×1 guter Architekturdiagramme

Von schlechter zu besser mit 11 praktischen Tipps

Blog Post

Documenting software architecture with arc42

arc42 is a template for architecture communication and documentation. It is a proven, practical and highly pragmatic approach and takes the pain out of documentation.

Blog Post

How I regained concentration and focus

For years, I enthusiastically produced content: books, articles, blog posts, and talks – averaging a book and a half plus five articles per year. Since about 2020, my productivity has plummeted – leaving me totally frustrated. There were no external causes, even the pandemic didn’t affect me, thanks to a nice home office and online work options — so no excuses. To find a way out of the misery, I put my own working habits to the test – and diagnosed a massive loss of concentration. ​ ​

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Eine kleine Geschichte über Qualität…

…die entfernt auch mit Software zu tun hat

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Principles of technical documentation

This article collects fundamental requirements for technical documentation, especially software architecture documentation, together with ideas how to satisfy those.

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Awesome presentations deserve beautiful code

Occasionally we need to put parts of our source code onto slides for presentations. The common presentation programs (such as PowerPoint or Keynote) fail miserably at this task because they interpret code as normal text. Syntax highlighting is lost, as are indentations. It looks lousy, and it’s no fun. This post introduces carbon.now.sh, a quick and free solution, created by the awesome people from @carbon_app.

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Authoring Markdown with Zotero - My Workflow

Combining simple writing with powerful references

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Setup für Hybrid-Workshops

In hybriden Workshops können Menschen online und vor Ort zusammenarbeiten, sowohl in Schulungen als auch bei anderen Arten von Meetings. In diesem Post zeigen wir euch, wie ihr solche hybriden Workshops oder Trainings durchführen könnt. Ihr erfahrt, wie ihr die wesentlichen (technischen) Herausforderungen meistert, was ihr an Equipment benötigt, und wie ihr das einrichtet. Dazu gibt’s eine Menge lessons learned über kombinierte online- und vor-Ort Veranstaltungen.

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Quality Driven Software Architecture - Revised

Quality is the raison d’être for software architects: Our systems should be reliable, performant, scalable and user-friendly. Systems should be build and maintained cost-effective and future-proof. Every IT professional knows that this combination of characteristics means hard work. The article shows how you can methodically construct quality.

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What’s in a name: Legacy
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What’s in a Name: Quality

We use the word quality colloquially for something “good” – but we usually leave open what exactly we mean by it. This article illustrates that we should be a little more precise in this regard.

Blog Post

Migrating the iSAQB® Mock Examination to AsciiDoc

The iSAQB(R) provides a mock-examination for the Foundation-Level certification. This post shows how we moved this exam from docx format to AsciiDoc, facilitating collaboration and enabling automated generation of the required multilingual document variants.

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The (new) Software Architecture Foundation curriculum
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iSAQB Advanced Level examination anti-patterns

As the “crowning glory” of the iSAQB(R) Advanced Certification, you have to write an approximately 40-page-long paper (AKA architectural solution) to a given problem. During our 5+ years of experience in reviewing such papers, we found several anti-patterns. This blog post aims to help future CPSA-A aspirants to avoid these nasty glitches.