Started in 2011 as my outlet to share my experiences on personal life and work topics. My handle is khanmjk. My friends & colleagues call me "Mo". This blog is an experiment, work-in-progress. Life: Self-awareness, personal development, growth hacking (quantified self). Work: Software and Systems Engineering, Leadership, Management, New Ideas and OpEds.
Saturday 11 December 2021
Opinion: Cloud Services impact on TV
(11-Dec-21 clearing out old drafts cache 2012-2016, articles I didn't get round to finishing)
What I expect from a STB Architect Role...
(11-Dec-21 clearing out old drafts cache 2012-2016, articles I didn't get round to finishing)
One of my most well read and often-sited posts, and the post that steered much of the changes I got introduced into my project was my Overview of Architecture Roles in Digital TV Projects. I have yet to change my view on the demand and need of real architects on software projects, and since my focus is on software development in Digital TV Systems, I remain unconvinced that the role is either not required, or the expectation from the role remains purely a high-level technical co-ordination or problem-solving role. I also remain totally unconvinced that Agile/Scrum calls for less focus on up-front architecture activities either.
I have worked with Digital TV Software Projects throughout my professional career, some might call this expert knowledge (although I am thinking of branching out into Cloud-Services as an attempt to remain up-to-date & current) - I have seen traditional Waterfall projects, classic Agile/Scrum small-scale projects and also managed Large-Scale Distributed Projects implementing a mix of Structured & Agile. I have been on training courses on Agile/Scrum, read most of the popular books on the subject, and haven't found much evidence that speaks against following at least some rigour when it comes to Software/Systems Architecture.
This post is about sharing some of the activities that I've come to expect from a STB Architect Role, by building on the high level requirements that I introduced in the original post on Architect Roles:
[RECAP typical STB Architecture Stack]
[HAL / CDI Layer - broad profile / review / etc]
[Basic STB Architecture building blocks:
- device memory map
- device hard disk partitioning
- device hard disk management
- component interfaces
- component communications
- interface patterns / protocols
- software classes / framework - base classes
- use cases: Product Use Case - System Use Case - Feature Use Case - Functional Component Use Case, etc
- tracking memory management
- tracking stability
- assisting in defect triage / classification
- security aspects - kernel hardening, etc
- open source knowledge
- co-ordinating technical discussions, not doing the technical debugging - but advising/co-ordinating
- managing vendor expectations
- future looking roadmap features
- works on multiple projects & activities at once
- excellent time management & documentation skills
- high level design - UML
- interface control definitions
Architecture Patterns: How to design an EPG?
(11-Dec-21 clearing out old drafts cache 2012-2016, articles I didn't get round to finishing)
Managing Large-Scale Projects using Agile, Part 5 - Implementing a Large-Scale Architecture Model
(11-Dec-21 clearing out old drafts cache 2012-2016, articles I didn't get round to finishing)
This is Part 5 in my series of posts on a case study in Large-Scale Distributed Software Development using Agile Methodologies for a Digital TV Set-Top-Box project. I have covered the following topics to date:
- Part 0: Introduction: this post - Objectives
- Part 1: The Stage: What is a Large-Scale Software Development Project (LSSDP) anyway?
- Part 2: Organisational Structures for Large-Scale Software Projects
- Part 3: Implementing Large-Scale Agile/Scrum Model - Product Management Methodology
- Part 4: Implementing Large-Scale Development, Integration & Delivery Model
In this post, I'll discuss a Large-Scale Architectural Model we adopted, touching on the concepts and challenges we experienced. I have broken down this post into the following sub-topics:
- Recap the project, STB Software Stack & Organisational Structure
- Overview of the Organisational Structure around the Software Architecture
- Breakdown of the Architecture Processes, key areas of maintaining architectural integrity
- Requirements, Design & Implementation Model
- Communication Challenges (Collaboration, Reviews, Meetings, Documentation)
- Controlling Change (APIs / ICDs)
- Scaling the Roadmap - Advanced Features, Multiple Customers, Short Release Cycles
STB Performance Testing
(11-Dec-21 clearing out old drafts cache 2012-2016, articles I didn't get round to finishing)
[talk about why you need to do this...example performance tests]
Managing Large-Scale Projects using Agile, Part 8 - Conclusions
(11-Dec-21 clearing out old drafts cache 2012-2016, articles I didn't get round to finishing)
- recap the model
- talk about management challenges - admin
- share the twitter discussions from Kane Mar
- Reference Software in 30 days
- talk about the challenges with adopting agile in large scale STB projects - very hard to achieve, has to be done piecemeal
Conclusions
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