Keynote: Evolving the Notion of Software Architecture: Three Dimensions

Abstract:

The field of software architecture as well as the role of software architects is continuously evolving. The purpose of this talk is to explore the changing role of architecture along three dimensions. The first dimension is that for many companies, the role of software architecture changes from being product-specific to being specific to the software product line. Subsequently, for a successful product line, there often is an ambition to open up the software product line for third party developers and the community, resulting in an ecosystem-centric approach to architecture. For each step, significant changes to the role of the architecture can be identified. The second dimension is concerned with the development process. Whereas traditional software development tended to be sequential, modern development approach are highly parallel and require the architecture to be developed and evolved in parallel to software development. Also, this requires a different approach to system integration that is much more focused on composability than on traditional systems integration. The third dimension is concerned with the role of architecture after deployment. Software architecture plays an increasingly important role in everything from run-time variability to dynamic reconfiguration in response to changes in the environment. The talk will predominantly focus on the industrial experiences by the author during his tenure at Intuit and Nokia.

Bio:

Jan Bosch is VP, Engineering Process at Intuit Inc. Earlier, he was head of the Software and Application Technologies Laboratory at Nokia Research Center, Finland. Before joining Nokia, he headed the software engineering research group at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, where he holds a professorship in software engineering. He received a MSc degree from the University of Twente, The Netherlands, and a PhD degree from Lund University, Sweden. His research activities include software architecture design, software product families, software variability management and component-oriented programming. He is the author of a book "Design and Use of Software Architectures: Adopting and Evolving a Product Line Approach" published by Pearson Education (Addison-Wesley & ACM Press), (co-)editor of several books and volumes in, among others, the Springer LNCS series and (co-)author of a significant number of research articles. He has been guest editor for journal issues, chaired several conferences as general and program chair, served on many program committees and organized numerous workshops.

As a consultant, as a professor and as an employee, Jan has worked with and for many companies on strategic reuse in general and software product lines specifically, including Philips, Thales Naval Netherlands, Robert Bosch GmbH, Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson, Tellabs, Avaya, Tieto Enator and Det Norska Veritas. Around software product lines, he has published on, advised and implemented specific techniques and methods around, among others, software architecture, software variability management, the link to business strategy, organizational models, assessment frameworks, adoption frameworks and quality attributes. More information about his background can be found at his website: www.janbosch.com.

When not working, Jan divides his time between his family, a spouse and three young boys, reading science fiction and sports, preferably long distance running, swimming, biking and horseback riding.