Sunday, May 15, 2011

The trail to the big ball of mud


  • Check out the first version of an app
  • Run code analysis tools like Structure 101 or Lattix on them, and setup rules for architectural violations
  • Repeat for each version to date
  • Project the results on a time-lapse display tool that shows change in architectural violations over time
This will show you:
  • The inflexion points where the implementation deviated from the original intent
  • Impact of adding new resources
  • Impact of not having policy manifested in the system/ not having documentation
  • Impact of tribal knowledge
I posit that this will also show you:
  • Why thought leaders that build great systems need not always make great teachers
  • Why tribes/inner circles are a bad idea
  • Why NIH is a bad idea
  • Why publicly available implementations/frameworks are better than proprietary ones in general
  • How a well documented proprietary framework with a clearly manifested policy could be a long way from becoming BBOMA. Although you might not find very many examples of such a framework :)

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