Tag API design
Article Series 'API Design Pattern of the Week'
The authors of the Addison-Wesley book “Patterns for API Design — Simplifying Integration with Loosely Coupled Message Exchanges” publish(ed) 21 articles online, featuring selected patterns from their book. The series...
Returning to EuroPLoP — Topics: API Refactoring and Pattern Visualization
EuroPLoP is one of the go-to conferences on all things patterns; our “Patterns for API Design” benefitted a lot from EuroPLoP writers’ workshops 2017 to 2020. All five co-authors of...
Notes from The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event — Vaughn Vernon Signature Series Live in Action
The authors of Vaughn’s book series at Addison Wesley teamed up for a free online conference. “The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event” covered not only software architecture, domain modeling and...
API Design Review Checklist: Questions Concerning the Developer Experience (DX)
This post lists 25 questions to ask when reviewing the Developer Experience (DX) of an API. It groups them by the four DX pillars (functionality, stability, ease of use, clarity)...
Design Practice Repository and Reference: GitPages Enhanced and eBook Completed
Our public Design Practice Repository (DPR) and the corresponding eBook at LeanPub collect proven method elements for agile architecting in general and API/service design in particular. Version 1.5 of the...
API Patterns Website Redesigned and Sample Book Chapter Available
Update (November 9, 2023): 19 of our API design patterns are also featured in online articles now. A story on Medium list them.
Domain-Driven Design in Practice — Experience with Context Mapper
Context Mapper is an open source DSL and tool for Domain-driven design (DDD), resulting from joint work by Stefan Kapferer and Olaf Zimmermann. This post and a sibling give a...
New Book 'Patterns for API Design' Published
Our pattern language for API and service design forms the core of a Signature Series book published by Addison Wesley Professional!
Process-Oriented Service Design with Discrete Event Simulation
The post on “Event-Driven Service Design” proposes continuous refinement steps to derive process flows and API designs from event-command chains. Here, we show how to convert such process flows to...
Story-Driven Service Design: From Feature Request to Minimum Viable API Product
Goal-oriented API design (“contract-first”) is a recommended practice in the Web API community; data modeling is equally important to balance API granularity and client-provider coupling. Finally, refactoring to API patterns...
Event-Driven Service Design: Five Steps from Event Storming to OpenAPI and Camel Flow
Event storming workshops yield domain events and commands (among other artifacts). This post proposes a continuous refinement process to derive an API design and an executable integration flow from such...
What is a Cloud-Native Application Anyway? From Analysis to Synthesis
In a previous post, we collected twelve definitions of cloud-native. In this post, we derive yet another one from those (and our own experience). Two, actually (“How standards proliferate”).
What is a Cloud-Native Application Anyway? 12 Definitions Distilled
Cloud-Native Application (CNA) has been a trending buzzword in blogs, books and articles for several years now. But what does it take for an application to be(come) cloud-native? Do we...
Survey on API Change Drivers and Evolution (Finished)
It would be great if you could help the community to find out what future API design methods and tools should do – by filling out a short survey.
APIs should get to the POINT
This post proposes five principles for API design, summarized in the backronym POINT: purposeful, style-oriented, isolated, channel-neutral and T-shaped.
DPR: Open Source Repository and eBook Collecting Mighty Methods
The Design Practice Repository (DPR) on GitHub collects proven method elements and other knowledge nuggets for API and service design — and agile software architecture work in general. This post...
Microservices Positions and Consolidated Definition
Microservice architectures evolved from previous incarnations of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) to promote agility and elasticity. This post updates the SOA vs. microservices positioning part of an older IFS web page...
Domain-Driven Service Design with Context Mapper and MDSL
In an ICWE keynote, I presented(ed) our evolving tool chain for object-oriented analysis and design (or DDD, to be precise) and service design. Here’s how to run the full demo....
Getting Started with Microservice API Patterns (MAP)
In a previous post, I reflected about the evolution of Microservice API Patterns (MAP) since 2016. This “meta-post” points you at presentations and articles motivating the need for MAP, introducing...
MAP Retrospective and Outlook
Microservices are still trending, but not straightforward to design well. Patterns are a mature and elaborate form of knowledge sharing, so Microservice API Patterns (MAP) complement other pattern languages to...
Blog Index (and Pointers to other Blogs)
This “meta-post” lists all posts in The Concerned Architect (by topic). Pointers to blogs that I visit when I am not busy consulting, designing, coding, teaching, writing can be found...
Tag architectural decisions
Seven Architectural Decision Making Fallacies (and Ways Around Them)
When making Architectural Decisions (ADs), things can go wrong. Biases and misconceptions are common. As a result, answers to “why this design?” questions, captured in AD Records (ADRs), may have...
ADG: A Light Architectural Decision Guidance and Management Tool
ADG is a novel command-line tool for managing recurring architectural decisions. This blog post takes you through its core features. Two decisions regarding Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) and their realization...
A Definition of Ready for Architectural Decisions (ADs)
It is important to hit the most responsible moment for an Architectural Decision (AD) about a pattern or other concept, technology or product. But when is an AD actually ready...
How to Build and Run a Decision-Making Architecture Board
This guest post is about collaborative architectural decision making, by way of a cross-organization software architecture board. My former colleague Hans-Peter Hoidn reports on motivation, setup and value of such...
An Adoption Model for Architectural Decision Making and Capturing
Architectural Decision (AD) making and capturing are essential tasks for enterprise architects and solution architects; Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) have become increasingly popular. However, principles and practices for AD management...
How to review Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) — and how not to
This post reflects about reviewing ADRs. It identifies three review perspectives, recommends related practices and discusses anti-patterns. A review checklist is provided and an ADR reviewer pledge proposed.1 ADR stands...
How to create Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) — and how not to
ADR stands for architectural decision record, but could just as well stand for archive of design rationale. This post is about making ADRs valuable; a sibling post covers ADR review....
The Markdown ADR (MADR) Template Explained and Distilled
The Markdown Architectural Decision Record (MADR) Template turned five on Nov 22, 2022. MADR stems from documenting architectural decisions and used to be named “Markdown Architectural Decision Records”; but time...
ADR = Any Decision Record? Architecture, Design and Beyond
If architectural decision records are so useful to capture software design rationale, why not extend their scope: Can they log organizational and managerial decisions as well? How about everyday decisions?...
Architectural Significance Criteria and Some Core Decisions Required
What is important when analyzing and designing software architectures, and what is not? This post proposes 5+2 criteria for the architectural significance of requirements (and other artifacts) and applies them...
A Definition of Done for Architectural Decision Making
It is good to know when the most responsible moment for an architectural decision about a pattern or technology has come. But when can a decision be considered done? This...
Architectural Decisions — The Making Of
Architectural Decisions (ADs) have been answering “why” questions about design options since the inception of software architecture in the 1990s. Ways to capture them should be part of each architect’s...
Blog Index (and Pointers to other Blogs)
This “meta-post” lists all posts in The Concerned Architect (by topic). Pointers to blogs that I visit when I am not busy consulting, designing, coding, teaching, writing can be found...
Tag microservices
Article Series 'API Design Pattern of the Week'
The authors of the Addison-Wesley book “Patterns for API Design — Simplifying Integration with Loosely Coupled Message Exchanges” publish(ed) 21 articles online, featuring selected patterns from their book. The series...
Notes from The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event — Vaughn Vernon Signature Series Live in Action
The authors of Vaughn’s book series at Addison Wesley teamed up for a free online conference. “The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event” covered not only software architecture, domain modeling and...
API Patterns Website Redesigned and Sample Book Chapter Available
Update (November 9, 2023): 19 of our API design patterns are also featured in online articles now. A story on Medium list them.
Domain-Driven Design in Practice — Experience with Context Mapper
Context Mapper is an open source DSL and tool for Domain-driven design (DDD), resulting from joint work by Stefan Kapferer and Olaf Zimmermann. This post and a sibling give a...
New Book 'Patterns for API Design' Published
Our pattern language for API and service design forms the core of a Signature Series book published by Addison Wesley Professional!
Process-Oriented Service Design with Discrete Event Simulation
The post on “Event-Driven Service Design” proposes continuous refinement steps to derive process flows and API designs from event-command chains. Here, we show how to convert such process flows to...
Story-Driven Service Design: From Feature Request to Minimum Viable API Product
Goal-oriented API design (“contract-first”) is a recommended practice in the Web API community; data modeling is equally important to balance API granularity and client-provider coupling. Finally, refactoring to API patterns...
Event-Driven Service Design: Five Steps from Event Storming to OpenAPI and Camel Flow
Event storming workshops yield domain events and commands (among other artifacts). This post proposes a continuous refinement process to derive an API design and an executable integration flow from such...
What is a Cloud-Native Application Anyway? From Analysis to Synthesis
In a previous post, we collected twelve definitions of cloud-native. In this post, we derive yet another one from those (and our own experience). Two, actually (“How standards proliferate”).
What is a Cloud-Native Application Anyway? 12 Definitions Distilled
Cloud-Native Application (CNA) has been a trending buzzword in blogs, books and articles for several years now. But what does it take for an application to be(come) cloud-native? Do we...
Survey on API Change Drivers and Evolution (Finished)
It would be great if you could help the community to find out what future API design methods and tools should do – by filling out a short survey.
APIs should get to the POINT
This post proposes five principles for API design, summarized in the backronym POINT: purposeful, style-oriented, isolated, channel-neutral and T-shaped.
Microservices Positions and Consolidated Definition
Microservice architectures evolved from previous incarnations of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) to promote agility and elasticity. This post updates the SOA vs. microservices positioning part of an older IFS web page...
Domain-Driven Service Design with Context Mapper and MDSL
In an ICWE keynote, I presented(ed) our evolving tool chain for object-oriented analysis and design (or DDD, to be precise) and service design. Here’s how to run the full demo....
Getting Started with Microservice API Patterns (MAP)
In a previous post, I reflected about the evolution of Microservice API Patterns (MAP) since 2016. This “meta-post” points you at presentations and articles motivating the need for MAP, introducing...
Conference Updates: ECSA, ICSA, SummerSoC, EuroPLoP 202x
Difficult times for conference organizers… ECSA 2020 and Microservices 2020, two events I helped organize in 2020, took place online. What is happening in 2021?
MAP Retrospective and Outlook
Microservices are still trending, but not straightforward to design well. Patterns are a mature and elaborate form of knowledge sharing, so Microservice API Patterns (MAP) complement other pattern languages to...
Blog Index (and Pointers to other Blogs)
This “meta-post” lists all posts in The Concerned Architect (by topic). Pointers to blogs that I visit when I am not busy consulting, designing, coding, teaching, writing can be found...
Tag coaching
Do's and Don'ts in Technical Reports about Term and Thesis Projects
Springtime is thesis writing time in many universities. This post shares editorial advice from thesis reviewers and provides a checklist of questions they tend to ask. It does not claim...
Novel Measurements for Academic Work (and Beyond?)
I enjoyed reading about “Satirical ways to measure academics” in Austin Z. Henley’s blog. It inspired me to compile additional ones — about teaching, research, administration of academic work and,...
Messages from Practice to Academia, Part 3: Bridge Building and Topics of Interest
Update (7/2025): Parts of this post have been published as a “Dear Researchers” column in JSS: “Overcoming the research-practice gap: Root cause analysis and topics of practical relevance in software...
Research Methods and Peer Review Advice
Which level of research rigor and result maturity is required to satisfy paper reviewers? I shared tips how to write for reviewability and how to review before. Here are some...
Shorthand and Markup for Speedy Note-Taking and Review Comments
I review documents a lot, and I attend many meetings too. Creating meeting minutes or review comments ain’t fun; the same holds for processing them. Over the years, I have...
Reports of Insights, Stories and Experience Reports
News (7/2025): Hello “Dear Researchers”! I now co-edit this fairly new column in the Journal of Software and Systems together with Austin Henley. Learn about it in this post.
How to Write Review-Friendly Articles
Scientific and technical writing is hard and requires deliberate practice. I already blogged about some of the challenges. Here is some more advice.
Technical Writing Tips and Tricks
When authoring specifications, technical documentation or articles, many pitfalls wait for authors (and, as a consequence, their readers) — but there are ways around them. In this post, I’ll highlight...
Blog Index (and Pointers to other Blogs)
This “meta-post” lists all posts in The Concerned Architect (by topic). Pointers to blogs that I visit when I am not busy consulting, designing, coding, teaching, writing can be found...
Tag DDD
More Resources about AI You Might Want to Review
I came across additional reading resources since I posted “Ten Resources about AI in Software Engineering You Do Not Want to Miss”. You might find them useful too.
Classical Papers in Computer Science and Software Engineering: A Reading Group
Reading technical papers typically is a lone activity. Does it have to be? To find out, we ran a reading group. The group members read a famous and/or seminal paper...
Notes from The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event — Vaughn Vernon Signature Series Live in Action
The authors of Vaughn’s book series at Addison Wesley teamed up for a free online conference. “The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event” covered not only software architecture, domain modeling and...
Domain-Driven Design in Practice — Experience with Context Mapper
Context Mapper is an open source DSL and tool for Domain-driven design (DDD), resulting from joint work by Stefan Kapferer and Olaf Zimmermann. This post and a sibling give a...
Process-Oriented Service Design with Discrete Event Simulation
The post on “Event-Driven Service Design” proposes continuous refinement steps to derive process flows and API designs from event-command chains. Here, we show how to convert such process flows to...
Story-Driven Service Design: From Feature Request to Minimum Viable API Product
Goal-oriented API design (“contract-first”) is a recommended practice in the Web API community; data modeling is equally important to balance API granularity and client-provider coupling. Finally, refactoring to API patterns...
Event-Driven Service Design: Five Steps from Event Storming to OpenAPI and Camel Flow
Event storming workshops yield domain events and commands (among other artifacts). This post proposes a continuous refinement process to derive an API design and an executable integration flow from such...
Driven by Acronyms
Aspect-oriented programming, behavior-driven development, CAP theorem… can we cook some more IT alphabet soup? This method and practice reference (as is, to be) and TLA resolver is not to be...
Microservices Positions and Consolidated Definition
Microservice architectures evolved from previous incarnations of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) to promote agility and elasticity. This post updates the SOA vs. microservices positioning part of an older IFS web page...
Domain-Driven Service Design with Context Mapper and MDSL
In an ICWE keynote, I presented(ed) our evolving tool chain for object-oriented analysis and design (or DDD, to be precise) and service design. Here’s how to run the full demo....
Blog Index (and Pointers to other Blogs)
This “meta-post” lists all posts in The Concerned Architect (by topic). Pointers to blogs that I visit when I am not busy consulting, designing, coding, teaching, writing can be found...
Tag research to practice
Classical Papers in Computer Science and Software Engineering: A Reading Group
Reading technical papers typically is a lone activity. Does it have to be? To find out, we ran a reading group. The group members read a famous and/or seminal paper...
Novel Measurements for Academic Work (and Beyond?)
I enjoyed reading about “Satirical ways to measure academics” in Austin Z. Henley’s blog. It inspired me to compile additional ones — about teaching, research, administration of academic work and,...
Messages from Practice to Academia, Part 3: Bridge Building and Topics of Interest
Update (7/2025): Parts of this post have been published as a “Dear Researchers” column in JSS: “Overcoming the research-practice gap: Root cause analysis and topics of practical relevance in software...
Messages from Practice to Academia, Part 2: Reasons for the Research-Practice Gap
Update (7/2025): The “Dear Researchers” column “Overcoming the research-practice gap: Root cause analysis and topics of practical relevance in software architecture and distributed systems” (JSS, open access) features a subset...
Messages from Practice to Academia, Part 1: New Journal Column 'Dear Researchers'
Update (7/2025): The column has four articles now, available on a JSS website. Latest addition: “Overcoming the research-practice gap: Root cause analysis and topics of practical relevance in software architecture...
How to Write Review-Friendly Articles
Scientific and technical writing is hard and requires deliberate practice. I already blogged about some of the challenges. Here is some more advice.
Technical Writing Tips and Tricks
When authoring specifications, technical documentation or articles, many pitfalls wait for authors (and, as a consequence, their readers) — but there are ways around them. In this post, I’ll highlight...
Tag technical writing
Do's and Don'ts in Technical Reports about Term and Thesis Projects
Springtime is thesis writing time in many universities. This post shares editorial advice from thesis reviewers and provides a checklist of questions they tend to ask. It does not claim...
Messages from Practice to Academia, Part 1: New Journal Column 'Dear Researchers'
Update (7/2025): The column has four articles now, available on a JSS website. Latest addition: “Overcoming the research-practice gap: Root cause analysis and topics of practical relevance in software architecture...
Research Methods and Peer Review Advice
Which level of research rigor and result maturity is required to satisfy paper reviewers? I shared tips how to write for reviewability and how to review before. Here are some...
Shorthand and Markup for Speedy Note-Taking and Review Comments
I review documents a lot, and I attend many meetings too. Creating meeting minutes or review comments ain’t fun; the same holds for processing them. Over the years, I have...
Reports of Insights, Stories and Experience Reports
News (7/2025): Hello “Dear Researchers”! I now co-edit this fairly new column in the Journal of Software and Systems together with Austin Henley. Learn about it in this post.
How to Write Review-Friendly Articles
Scientific and technical writing is hard and requires deliberate practice. I already blogged about some of the challenges. Here is some more advice.
MAP Retrospective and Outlook
Microservices are still trending, but not straightforward to design well. Patterns are a mature and elaborate form of knowledge sharing, so Microservice API Patterns (MAP) complement other pattern languages to...
Technical Writing Tips and Tricks
When authoring specifications, technical documentation or articles, many pitfalls wait for authors (and, as a consequence, their readers) — but there are ways around them. In this post, I’ll highlight...
Tag documentation
ADG: A Light Architectural Decision Guidance and Management Tool
ADG is a novel command-line tool for managing recurring architectural decisions. This blog post takes you through its core features. Two decisions regarding Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) and their realization...
Returning to EuroPLoP — Topics: API Refactoring and Pattern Visualization
EuroPLoP is one of the go-to conferences on all things patterns; our “Patterns for API Design” benefitted a lot from EuroPLoP writers’ workshops 2017 to 2020. All five co-authors of...
How to Build and Run a Decision-Making Architecture Board
This guest post is about collaborative architectural decision making, by way of a cross-organization software architecture board. My former colleague Hans-Peter Hoidn reports on motivation, setup and value of such...
An Adoption Model for Architectural Decision Making and Capturing
Architectural Decision (AD) making and capturing are essential tasks for enterprise architects and solution architects; Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) have become increasingly popular. However, principles and practices for AD management...
How to review Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) — and how not to
This post reflects about reviewing ADRs. It identifies three review perspectives, recommends related practices and discusses anti-patterns. A review checklist is provided and an ADR reviewer pledge proposed.1 ADR stands...
How to create Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) — and how not to
ADR stands for architectural decision record, but could just as well stand for archive of design rationale. This post is about making ADRs valuable; a sibling post covers ADR review....
Design Practice Repository and Reference: GitPages Enhanced and eBook Completed
Our public Design Practice Repository (DPR) and the corresponding eBook at LeanPub collect proven method elements for agile architecting in general and API/service design in particular. Version 1.5 of the...
The Markdown ADR (MADR) Template Explained and Distilled
The Markdown Architectural Decision Record (MADR) Template turned five on Nov 22, 2022. MADR stems from documenting architectural decisions and used to be named “Markdown Architectural Decision Records”; but time...
ADR = Any Decision Record? Architecture, Design and Beyond
If architectural decision records are so useful to capture software design rationale, why not extend their scope: Can they log organizational and managerial decisions as well? How about everyday decisions?...
Awesome Architecture Descriptions and Pattern Languages
This “meta-post” points you at valuable templates for documenting software architectures as well as a few pattern languages that can support their creation.
Do Software Architectures Meet Extra-Functional or Non-Functional Requirements?
Should our favorite “-ilities” and miscellaneous design/decision drivers be filed under “Non-Functional Requirements” or “Extra-Functional Requirements”? The two editors of IEEE Software Insights do not agree. Read their arguments and...
DPR: Open Source Repository and eBook Collecting Mighty Methods
The Design Practice Repository (DPR) on GitHub collects proven method elements and other knowledge nuggets for API and service design — and agile software architecture work in general. This post...
Reports of Insights, Stories and Experience Reports
News (7/2025): Hello “Dear Researchers”! I now co-edit this fairly new column in the Journal of Software and Systems together with Austin Henley. Learn about it in this post.
Architectural Decisions — The Making Of
Architectural Decisions (ADs) have been answering “why” questions about design options since the inception of software architecture in the 1990s. Ways to capture them should be part of each architect’s...
Tag software architecture
Seven Architectural Decision Making Fallacies (and Ways Around Them)
When making Architectural Decisions (ADs), things can go wrong. Biases and misconceptions are common. As a result, answers to “why this design?” questions, captured in AD Records (ADRs), may have...
ADG: A Light Architectural Decision Guidance and Management Tool
ADG is a novel command-line tool for managing recurring architectural decisions. This blog post takes you through its core features. Two decisions regarding Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) and their realization...
Fifty Years of IT: Evolutions and Constants — A Personal Retrospective
In this guest post, my former colleague Hans-Peter Hoidn looks back on 50 years in Information Technology (IT) and the development and architecting experiences he gained. He comments on technologies...
A Definition of Ready for Architectural Decisions (ADs)
It is important to hit the most responsible moment for an Architectural Decision (AD) about a pattern or other concept, technology or product. But when is an AD actually ready...
Returning to EuroPLoP — Topics: API Refactoring and Pattern Visualization
EuroPLoP is one of the go-to conferences on all things patterns; our “Patterns for API Design” benefitted a lot from EuroPLoP writers’ workshops 2017 to 2020. All five co-authors of...
Notes from The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event — Vaughn Vernon Signature Series Live in Action
The authors of Vaughn’s book series at Addison Wesley teamed up for a free online conference. “The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event” covered not only software architecture, domain modeling and...
How to Build and Run a Decision-Making Architecture Board
This guest post is about collaborative architectural decision making, by way of a cross-organization software architecture board. My former colleague Hans-Peter Hoidn reports on motivation, setup and value of such...
An Adoption Model for Architectural Decision Making and Capturing
Architectural Decision (AD) making and capturing are essential tasks for enterprise architects and solution architects; Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) have become increasingly popular. However, principles and practices for AD management...
How to review Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) — and how not to
This post reflects about reviewing ADRs. It identifies three review perspectives, recommends related practices and discusses anti-patterns. A review checklist is provided and an ADR reviewer pledge proposed.1 ADR stands...
How to create Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) — and how not to
ADR stands for architectural decision record, but could just as well stand for archive of design rationale. This post is about making ADRs valuable; a sibling post covers ADR review....
Design Practice Repository and Reference: GitPages Enhanced and eBook Completed
Our public Design Practice Repository (DPR) and the corresponding eBook at LeanPub collect proven method elements for agile architecting in general and API/service design in particular. Version 1.5 of the...
The Markdown ADR (MADR) Template Explained and Distilled
The Markdown Architectural Decision Record (MADR) Template turned five on Nov 22, 2022. MADR stems from documenting architectural decisions and used to be named “Markdown Architectural Decision Records”; but time...
Questions to Ask when Migrating to the Cloud
Cloud-Native Application (CNA) has been a trending buzzword in blogs, books and articles for several years now. But what about migrating an application to the cloud? How to find out...
What is a Cloud-Native Application Anyway? From Analysis to Synthesis
In a previous post, we collected twelve definitions of cloud-native. In this post, we derive yet another one from those (and our own experience). Two, actually (“How standards proliferate”).
What is a Cloud-Native Application Anyway? 12 Definitions Distilled
Cloud-Native Application (CNA) has been a trending buzzword in blogs, books and articles for several years now. But what does it take for an application to be(come) cloud-native? Do we...
Research Methods and Peer Review Advice
Which level of research rigor and result maturity is required to satisfy paper reviewers? I shared tips how to write for reviewability and how to review before. Here are some...
Awesome Architecture Descriptions and Pattern Languages
This “meta-post” points you at valuable templates for documenting software architectures as well as a few pattern languages that can support their creation.
Do Software Architectures Meet Extra-Functional or Non-Functional Requirements?
Should our favorite “-ilities” and miscellaneous design/decision drivers be filed under “Non-Functional Requirements” or “Extra-Functional Requirements”? The two editors of IEEE Software Insights do not agree. Read their arguments and...
Driven by Acronyms
Aspect-oriented programming, behavior-driven development, CAP theorem… can we cook some more IT alphabet soup? This method and practice reference (as is, to be) and TLA resolver is not to be...
DPR: Open Source Repository and eBook Collecting Mighty Methods
The Design Practice Repository (DPR) on GitHub collects proven method elements and other knowledge nuggets for API and service design — and agile software architecture work in general. This post...
Architectural Significance Criteria and Some Core Decisions Required
What is important when analyzing and designing software architectures, and what is not? This post proposes 5+2 criteria for the architectural significance of requirements (and other artifacts) and applies them...
A Definition of Done for Architectural Decision Making
It is good to know when the most responsible moment for an architectural decision about a pattern or technology has come. But when can a decision be considered done? This...
Conference Updates: ECSA, ICSA, SummerSoC, EuroPLoP 202x
Difficult times for conference organizers… ECSA 2020 and Microservices 2020, two events I helped organize in 2020, took place online. What is happening in 2021?
Architectural Decisions — The Making Of
Architectural Decisions (ADs) have been answering “why” questions about design options since the inception of software architecture in the 1990s. Ways to capture them should be part of each architect’s...
Tag template
An Adoption Model for Architectural Decision Making and Capturing
Architectural Decision (AD) making and capturing are essential tasks for enterprise architects and solution architects; Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) have become increasingly popular. However, principles and practices for AD management...
How to create Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) — and how not to
ADR stands for architectural decision record, but could just as well stand for archive of design rationale. This post is about making ADRs valuable; a sibling post covers ADR review....
Design Practice Repository and Reference: GitPages Enhanced and eBook Completed
Our public Design Practice Repository (DPR) and the corresponding eBook at LeanPub collect proven method elements for agile architecting in general and API/service design in particular. Version 1.5 of the...
The Markdown ADR (MADR) Template Explained and Distilled
The Markdown Architectural Decision Record (MADR) Template turned five on Nov 22, 2022. MADR stems from documenting architectural decisions and used to be named “Markdown Architectural Decision Records”; but time...
ADR = Any Decision Record? Architecture, Design and Beyond
If architectural decision records are so useful to capture software design rationale, why not extend their scope: Can they log organizational and managerial decisions as well? How about everyday decisions?...
Awesome Architecture Descriptions and Pattern Languages
This “meta-post” points you at valuable templates for documenting software architectures as well as a few pattern languages that can support their creation.
DPR: Open Source Repository and eBook Collecting Mighty Methods
The Design Practice Repository (DPR) on GitHub collects proven method elements and other knowledge nuggets for API and service design — and agile software architecture work in general. This post...
Architectural Significance Criteria and Some Core Decisions Required
What is important when analyzing and designing software architectures, and what is not? This post proposes 5+2 criteria for the architectural significance of requirements (and other artifacts) and applies them...
A Definition of Done for Architectural Decision Making
It is good to know when the most responsible moment for an architectural decision about a pattern or technology has come. But when can a decision be considered done? This...
Architectural Decisions — The Making Of
Architectural Decisions (ADs) have been answering “why” questions about design options since the inception of software architecture in the 1990s. Ways to capture them should be part of each architect’s...
Tag MAP
Article Series 'API Design Pattern of the Week'
The authors of the Addison-Wesley book “Patterns for API Design — Simplifying Integration with Loosely Coupled Message Exchanges” publish(ed) 21 articles online, featuring selected patterns from their book. The series...
Notes from The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event — Vaughn Vernon Signature Series Live in Action
The authors of Vaughn’s book series at Addison Wesley teamed up for a free online conference. “The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event” covered not only software architecture, domain modeling and...
API Design Review Checklist: Questions Concerning the Developer Experience (DX)
This post lists 25 questions to ask when reviewing the Developer Experience (DX) of an API. It groups them by the four DX pillars (functionality, stability, ease of use, clarity)...
API Patterns Website Redesigned and Sample Book Chapter Available
Update (November 9, 2023): 19 of our API design patterns are also featured in online articles now. A story on Medium list them.
New Book 'Patterns for API Design' Published
Our pattern language for API and service design forms the core of a Signature Series book published by Addison Wesley Professional!
Process-Oriented Service Design with Discrete Event Simulation
The post on “Event-Driven Service Design” proposes continuous refinement steps to derive process flows and API designs from event-command chains. Here, we show how to convert such process flows to...
Story-Driven Service Design: From Feature Request to Minimum Viable API Product
Goal-oriented API design (“contract-first”) is a recommended practice in the Web API community; data modeling is equally important to balance API granularity and client-provider coupling. Finally, refactoring to API patterns...
Event-Driven Service Design: Five Steps from Event Storming to OpenAPI and Camel Flow
Event storming workshops yield domain events and commands (among other artifacts). This post proposes a continuous refinement process to derive an API design and an executable integration flow from such...
Survey on API Change Drivers and Evolution (Finished)
It would be great if you could help the community to find out what future API design methods and tools should do – by filling out a short survey.
APIs should get to the POINT
This post proposes five principles for API design, summarized in the backronym POINT: purposeful, style-oriented, isolated, channel-neutral and T-shaped.
Domain-Driven Service Design with Context Mapper and MDSL
In an ICWE keynote, I presented(ed) our evolving tool chain for object-oriented analysis and design (or DDD, to be precise) and service design. Here’s how to run the full demo....
Getting Started with Microservice API Patterns (MAP)
In a previous post, I reflected about the evolution of Microservice API Patterns (MAP) since 2016. This “meta-post” points you at presentations and articles motivating the need for MAP, introducing...
MAP Retrospective and Outlook
Microservices are still trending, but not straightforward to design well. Patterns are a mature and elaborate form of knowledge sharing, so Microservice API Patterns (MAP) complement other pattern languages to...
Tag patterns
Article Series 'API Design Pattern of the Week'
The authors of the Addison-Wesley book “Patterns for API Design — Simplifying Integration with Loosely Coupled Message Exchanges” publish(ed) 21 articles online, featuring selected patterns from their book. The series...
Returning to EuroPLoP — Topics: API Refactoring and Pattern Visualization
EuroPLoP is one of the go-to conferences on all things patterns; our “Patterns for API Design” benefitted a lot from EuroPLoP writers’ workshops 2017 to 2020. All five co-authors of...
Notes from The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event — Vaughn Vernon Signature Series Live in Action
The authors of Vaughn’s book series at Addison Wesley teamed up for a free online conference. “The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event” covered not only software architecture, domain modeling and...
API Design Review Checklist: Questions Concerning the Developer Experience (DX)
This post lists 25 questions to ask when reviewing the Developer Experience (DX) of an API. It groups them by the four DX pillars (functionality, stability, ease of use, clarity)...
API Patterns Website Redesigned and Sample Book Chapter Available
Update (November 9, 2023): 19 of our API design patterns are also featured in online articles now. A story on Medium list them.
New Book 'Patterns for API Design' Published
Our pattern language for API and service design forms the core of a Signature Series book published by Addison Wesley Professional!
Process-Oriented Service Design with Discrete Event Simulation
The post on “Event-Driven Service Design” proposes continuous refinement steps to derive process flows and API designs from event-command chains. Here, we show how to convert such process flows to...
Story-Driven Service Design: From Feature Request to Minimum Viable API Product
Goal-oriented API design (“contract-first”) is a recommended practice in the Web API community; data modeling is equally important to balance API granularity and client-provider coupling. Finally, refactoring to API patterns...
Event-Driven Service Design: Five Steps from Event Storming to OpenAPI and Camel Flow
Event storming workshops yield domain events and commands (among other artifacts). This post proposes a continuous refinement process to derive an API design and an executable integration flow from such...
Awesome Architecture Descriptions and Pattern Languages
This “meta-post” points you at valuable templates for documenting software architectures as well as a few pattern languages that can support their creation.
Domain-Driven Service Design with Context Mapper and MDSL
In an ICWE keynote, I presented(ed) our evolving tool chain for object-oriented analysis and design (or DDD, to be precise) and service design. Here’s how to run the full demo....
Getting Started with Microservice API Patterns (MAP)
In a previous post, I reflected about the evolution of Microservice API Patterns (MAP) since 2016. This “meta-post” points you at presentations and articles motivating the need for MAP, introducing...
MAP Retrospective and Outlook
Microservices are still trending, but not straightforward to design well. Patterns are a mature and elaborate form of knowledge sharing, so Microservice API Patterns (MAP) complement other pattern languages to...
Tag conferences
Returning to EuroPLoP — Topics: API Refactoring and Pattern Visualization
EuroPLoP is one of the go-to conferences on all things patterns; our “Patterns for API Design” benefitted a lot from EuroPLoP writers’ workshops 2017 to 2020. All five co-authors of...
Notes from The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event — Vaughn Vernon Signature Series Live in Action
The authors of Vaughn’s book series at Addison Wesley teamed up for a free online conference. “The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event” covered not only software architecture, domain modeling and...
Conference Updates: ECSA, ICSA, SummerSoC, EuroPLoP 202x
Difficult times for conference organizers… ECSA 2020 and Microservices 2020, two events I helped organize in 2020, took place online. What is happening in 2021?
Tag agile architecting
A Definition of Ready for Architectural Decisions (ADs)
It is important to hit the most responsible moment for an Architectural Decision (AD) about a pattern or other concept, technology or product. But when is an AD actually ready...
Notes from The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event — Vaughn Vernon Signature Series Live in Action
The authors of Vaughn’s book series at Addison Wesley teamed up for a free online conference. “The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event” covered not only software architecture, domain modeling and...
An Adoption Model for Architectural Decision Making and Capturing
Architectural Decision (AD) making and capturing are essential tasks for enterprise architects and solution architects; Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) have become increasingly popular. However, principles and practices for AD management...
Design Practice Repository and Reference: GitPages Enhanced and eBook Completed
Our public Design Practice Repository (DPR) and the corresponding eBook at LeanPub collect proven method elements for agile architecting in general and API/service design in particular. Version 1.5 of the...
DPR: Open Source Repository and eBook Collecting Mighty Methods
The Design Practice Repository (DPR) on GitHub collects proven method elements and other knowledge nuggets for API and service design — and agile software architecture work in general. This post...
Architectural Significance Criteria and Some Core Decisions Required
What is important when analyzing and designing software architectures, and what is not? This post proposes 5+2 criteria for the architectural significance of requirements (and other artifacts) and applies them...
Microservices Positions and Consolidated Definition
Microservice architectures evolved from previous incarnations of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) to promote agility and elasticity. This post updates the SOA vs. microservices positioning part of an older IFS web page...
A Definition of Done for Architectural Decision Making
It is good to know when the most responsible moment for an architectural decision about a pattern or technology has come. But when can a decision be considered done? This...
Tag checklists
Do's and Don'ts in Technical Reports about Term and Thesis Projects
Springtime is thesis writing time in many universities. This post shares editorial advice from thesis reviewers and provides a checklist of questions they tend to ask. It does not claim...
A Definition of Ready for Architectural Decisions (ADs)
It is important to hit the most responsible moment for an Architectural Decision (AD) about a pattern or other concept, technology or product. But when is an AD actually ready...
An Adoption Model for Architectural Decision Making and Capturing
Architectural Decision (AD) making and capturing are essential tasks for enterprise architects and solution architects; Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) have become increasingly popular. However, principles and practices for AD management...
How to review Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) — and how not to
This post reflects about reviewing ADRs. It identifies three review perspectives, recommends related practices and discusses anti-patterns. A review checklist is provided and an ADR reviewer pledge proposed.1 ADR stands...
Design Practice Repository and Reference: GitPages Enhanced and eBook Completed
Our public Design Practice Repository (DPR) and the corresponding eBook at LeanPub collect proven method elements for agile architecting in general and API/service design in particular. Version 1.5 of the...
DPR: Open Source Repository and eBook Collecting Mighty Methods
The Design Practice Repository (DPR) on GitHub collects proven method elements and other knowledge nuggets for API and service design — and agile software architecture work in general. This post...
Architectural Significance Criteria and Some Core Decisions Required
What is important when analyzing and designing software architectures, and what is not? This post proposes 5+2 criteria for the architectural significance of requirements (and other artifacts) and applies them...
How to Write Review-Friendly Articles
Scientific and technical writing is hard and requires deliberate practice. I already blogged about some of the challenges. Here is some more advice.
A Definition of Done for Architectural Decision Making
It is good to know when the most responsible moment for an architectural decision about a pattern or technology has come. But when can a decision be considered done? This...
Tag quality requirements
Seven Architectural Decision Making Fallacies (and Ways Around Them)
When making Architectural Decisions (ADs), things can go wrong. Biases and misconceptions are common. As a result, answers to “why this design?” questions, captured in AD Records (ADRs), may have...
How to Build and Run a Decision-Making Architecture Board
This guest post is about collaborative architectural decision making, by way of a cross-organization software architecture board. My former colleague Hans-Peter Hoidn reports on motivation, setup and value of such...
How to review Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) — and how not to
This post reflects about reviewing ADRs. It identifies three review perspectives, recommends related practices and discusses anti-patterns. A review checklist is provided and an ADR reviewer pledge proposed.1 ADR stands...
How to create Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) — and how not to
ADR stands for architectural decision record, but could just as well stand for archive of design rationale. This post is about making ADRs valuable; a sibling post covers ADR review....
APIs should get to the POINT
This post proposes five principles for API design, summarized in the backronym POINT: purposeful, style-oriented, isolated, channel-neutral and T-shaped.
Do Software Architectures Meet Extra-Functional or Non-Functional Requirements?
Should our favorite “-ilities” and miscellaneous design/decision drivers be filed under “Non-Functional Requirements” or “Extra-Functional Requirements”? The two editors of IEEE Software Insights do not agree. Read their arguments and...
Architectural Significance Criteria and Some Core Decisions Required
What is important when analyzing and designing software architectures, and what is not? This post proposes 5+2 criteria for the architectural significance of requirements (and other artifacts) and applies them...
Tag entertainment
Novel Measurements for Academic Work (and Beyond?)
I enjoyed reading about “Satirical ways to measure academics” in Austin Z. Henley’s blog. It inspired me to compile additional ones — about teaching, research, administration of academic work and,...
Driven by Acronyms
Aspect-oriented programming, behavior-driven development, CAP theorem… can we cook some more IT alphabet soup? This method and practice reference (as is, to be) and TLA resolver is not to be...
Tag ressearch to practice
Research Methods and Peer Review Advice
Which level of research rigor and result maturity is required to satisfy paper reviewers? I shared tips how to write for reviewability and how to review before. Here are some...
Tag architectural principles
Notes from The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event — Vaughn Vernon Signature Series Live in Action
The authors of Vaughn’s book series at Addison Wesley teamed up for a free online conference. “The Architecture and Modeling Learning Event” covered not only software architecture, domain modeling and...
What is a Cloud-Native Application Anyway? From Analysis to Synthesis
In a previous post, we collected twelve definitions of cloud-native. In this post, we derive yet another one from those (and our own experience). Two, actually (“How standards proliferate”).
What is a Cloud-Native Application Anyway? 12 Definitions Distilled
Cloud-Native Application (CNA) has been a trending buzzword in blogs, books and articles for several years now. But what does it take for an application to be(come) cloud-native? Do we...
APIs should get to the POINT
This post proposes five principles for API design, summarized in the backronym POINT: purposeful, style-oriented, isolated, channel-neutral and T-shaped.
Tag cloud computing
Blog about Energy Consumption and Sustainable Software Engineering: 'Growing Green Software'
There is a new series of articles about measuring and improving the ecological footprint of Web applications. “Growing Green Software” advertises itself metaphorically as this:
Questions to Ask when Migrating to the Cloud
Cloud-Native Application (CNA) has been a trending buzzword in blogs, books and articles for several years now. But what about migrating an application to the cloud? How to find out...
What is a Cloud-Native Application Anyway? From Analysis to Synthesis
In a previous post, we collected twelve definitions of cloud-native. In this post, we derive yet another one from those (and our own experience). Two, actually (“How standards proliferate”).
What is a Cloud-Native Application Anyway? 12 Definitions Distilled
Cloud-Native Application (CNA) has been a trending buzzword in blogs, books and articles for several years now. But what does it take for an application to be(come) cloud-native? Do we...
Tag green software
Blog about Energy Consumption and Sustainable Software Engineering: 'Growing Green Software'
There is a new series of articles about measuring and improving the ecological footprint of Web applications. “Growing Green Software” advertises itself metaphorically as this:
Tag sustainability
Blog about Energy Consumption and Sustainable Software Engineering: 'Growing Green Software'
There is a new series of articles about measuring and improving the ecological footprint of Web applications. “Growing Green Software” advertises itself metaphorically as this:
Tag software engineering
More Resources about AI You Might Want to Review
I came across additional reading resources since I posted “Ten Resources about AI in Software Engineering You Do Not Want to Miss”. You might find them useful too.
Classical Papers in Computer Science and Software Engineering: A Reading Group
Reading technical papers typically is a lone activity. Does it have to be? To find out, we ran a reading group. The group members read a famous and/or seminal paper...
Happy Birthday 'The Concerned Architect': Five Years, 50 Posts
I started this website and blog in the spring of 2020 (had a lot of time on my hands back then 😉). This “meta” post recapitulates some highlights from five...
Ten Resources about AI in Software Engineering You Do Not Want to Miss
I usually despise click-bait titles but granted me an exception to the rule for this post. 😉 Let’s see whether it will delivers on its promise.
Messages from Practice to Academia, Part 3: Bridge Building and Topics of Interest
Update (7/2025): Parts of this post have been published as a “Dear Researchers” column in JSS: “Overcoming the research-practice gap: Root cause analysis and topics of practical relevance in software...
Messages from Practice to Academia, Part 2: Reasons for the Research-Practice Gap
Update (7/2025): The “Dear Researchers” column “Overcoming the research-practice gap: Root cause analysis and topics of practical relevance in software architecture and distributed systems” (JSS, open access) features a subset...
Fifty Years of IT: Evolutions and Constants — A Personal Retrospective
In this guest post, my former colleague Hans-Peter Hoidn looks back on 50 years in Information Technology (IT) and the development and architecting experiences he gained. He comments on technologies...
Messages from Practice to Academia, Part 1: New Journal Column 'Dear Researchers'
Update (7/2025): The column has four articles now, available on a JSS website. Latest addition: “Overcoming the research-practice gap: Root cause analysis and topics of practical relevance in software architecture...