New (October 14, 2024): Slides for ITARC keynote "Timing Architectural Decisions" (PDF).
New (August 23, 2024): Open Source method/practice repository Ethical Software Engineering (ESE) Version 1.1 released on GitHub.
New (April 14, 2024): "Patterns for API Design" workshop delivered at API Conference 2024. Short conference report (take aways, links) on Medium.
New (March 14, 2024): Slides from ETHICOMP 2024 talk on the emerging Ethical Software Engineering (ESE) method. Peer-reviewed extended abstract (PDF).
New (February 23, 2024): Four new papers on API design and refactoring, CI/CD setup experiences, ethical software engineering.
New (January 15, 2024): Article Series 'API Design Pattern of the Week' on LinkedIn and Medium (#apidpotw). New (December 1, 2023): A Definition of Ready for Architectural Decisions (ADs).
New (July 5, 2023): Returning to EuroPLoP — Topics: API Refactoring (Paper) and Pattern Visualization (Focus Group).
New (May 26, 2023): Notes from The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event — Vaughn Vernon Signature Series Live in Action. New (April/May, 2023): Advice how to create and review ADRs and proposal for An Adoption Model for Architectural Decision Making and Capturing.
New (Feb 16, 2023): "APIs as Service Activators: Tackling the Hard Parts of Integration Design" (ZEUS 2023 keynote slides).
The site features stories, insights, and unsolicited advice from 25+ years on the road in software architecture land. Content comes in two forms:
- The blog "The Concerned Architect" targets practicing and aspiring software architects, anybody interested in API/microservice design patterns and technical writers of all kinds. All posts are listed by topic in this index post; you also find links to other blogs there. You can view the posts by topic tag.
- Additional pages collect papers/presentations and outline my professional services portfolio.
- (as a technical writer) How to Write Review-Friendly Articles discusses what reviewers expect, shares some techniques how to meet these expectations and provides pointers to deeper technical writing advice. The Authoring category contains all posts of this kind.
- (as a software architect) Architectural Decisions — The Making Of recaps how architectural decisions have been treated in the last three decades, features a lightweight decision capturing template and gives examples of good and bad justifications. Also available: AD Definition of Done and more.
- (as an API designer) Getting Started with Microservice API Patterns (MAP) explains the scope of our pattern language for API design and evolution and points you at starter material. From 2016 to 2022, MAP evolved into an Addison Wesley book: "Patterns for API Design: Simplifying Integration with Loosely Coupled Message Exchanges":
Week 1: Wish List, Week 2: Pagination, Week 3: Error Report, Week 4: API Key, Week 5: Processing Resource, Week 6: Information Holder Resource, Week 7: Data Transfer Resource, Week 8: State Transition Operation, Week 9: Metadata Element, Week 10: Id Element. Week 11: Embedded Entity. Week 12: Linked Information Holder. Week 13: Conditional Request. Week 14: API Description, Week 15: Rate Limit, Week 16: Context Representation, Week 17: Version Identifier, Week 18: Two in Production, Week 19: Public API, Week 20: Retrieval Operation, Week 21: Service Level Agreement.
The book features these 21 patterns, and 23 more, in depth. Other topics that I am passionate — and opinionated — about include: There is an RSS feed for this site. Hope you like it!

Terms and conditions of using this website: see page Terms and Conditions.