I’ve been reading a lot of strategy books these last weeks 1 (also two James Bond books, but that is probably not related to this post), and I’ve been trying to tie it to my everyday work of enterprise architecture. Most of these posts are just me finding an excuse to put my thoughts to paper to see if they make sense, so why not write a new...
I’ve noticed a huge shift in the architecture of big companies in the last few years: companies are shifting from in-house development to third-party applications, shedding the traditional ‘Not Invented Here’ stigma in favor of external innovation. It is not hard to understand the rationale behind it: you can use the best tools in the market 1 to...
And we’ve come to the last post in the series of “communication for team leaders.” This one is about ownership. You can find the other posts here. https://frederickvanbrabant.com/blog/2024-10-11-communication-for-team-leaders-context/ https://frederickvanbrabant.com/blog/2024-10-31-communication-for-team-leaders-trust/ And these posts are based...
The second part of a three-part"Communication for Team Leaders". This one is about trust, letting go and delegating. I think it’s the hardest one for new managers. You can find the first post here: https://frederickvanbrabant.com/blog/2024-10-11-communication-for-team-leaders-context/ These posts are based on a part of my talk, “I just became a...
This will be the first post in a series of three called “Communication for Team Leaders”. The first focuses on context and why it’s crucial in daily communication and task-giving. These posts are based on a part of my talk, “I just became a team lead, now what” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWtSbTded0o). You can have a fantastic team of...
In the 2010s, there was a huge buzz around big data. Big data was going to save the world of decision-making. Gather all the information you can about the market, clients, employees, and your product, and just follow where the data will lead you. The big data buzzword went away a bit (I guess we now use it to fuel the AI buzz), but the mindset...
To me, it always seems strange that in a world that thrives on innovation and constant change, every architectural department tries to implement a rigid set of principles that stay in place for years. From software design patterns (think SOLID, DRY, …) to the more strategic layer (think TOGAF, PRINCE2, …), these principles seem to have been...
Today, I want to discuss the two big experiences you can have as an Enterprise Architect: working internally at a company and being a consultant. I’ve done both in the past, so I hope to bring some insights into this topic. I have the feeling that depending on what you have more experience with (internal or consulting), you will have a very...
Agile in the real world Before we start talking about architecture, it’s a good idea to lay out the foundation of this discussion first. I know there are a million articles about agile and how it will all save us from certain doom and is a money-making machine, but let’s stop the marketing drive for a second and have an honest look at it. I’ve...
What are business capabilities So we should probably start with this right? Business capabilities (further in this article referred to as capabilities) are the backbone of enterprise architecture. They are also, sadly, one of the most misunderstood things in enterprise architecture. You can think of a capability as something a company can, or is...
Picture this: it’s a Tuesday afternoon. You are called into a meeting room by your teamlead. He’s conversing with a client about a big new project they want to develop. After a bit of an introduction about the scope and features of the project, a very unrealistic deadline is proposed. Not only that, but you know from the past that this client has...
“The only way to make the deadline — the only way to go fast — is to keep the code as clean as possible at all times.” — Robert C. Martin I’m afraid I have to disagree with this statement. Let me tell you why. What is clean code There seem to be many opinions surrounding clean code. Some people have an entire architecture of how code should look....
You have probably already heard the horror stories of code interviews where they ask you to reverse a binary tree on a whiteboard. (if not check this blog post that I profoundly disagree with) Well, a few days ago I was in that exact situation. And I had no idea what the interviewer was talking about. So what are these binary trees and why is it...
I work in many legacy code bases, and in fact, I’ve made it a big part of my career. I love diving into big monoliths that have grown out of proportion and tidying them up. One of the best parts of that work is rewriting a God class into a collection of small reusable classes. Let’s take a look at what makes a simple class great. One of my...
Monday morning. Your previous project just wrapped up, and they are going to assign you a brand new one. They even promised you the lead on this project. Who said Mondays couldn’t be great? A few hours later and you are staring at the most dreadful code you have ever seen — controllers of more than a thousand lines, PHP that injects jQuery in the...
I always find it amazing to see how different people create pull requests. Some people like to put every file they’ve touched into one big commit. Other people split their commits up per file. There are even people that split it up according to domains. I’ve been all these people at one point in my career, but these days I’m all into atomic...
Microservices are all the rage these days. Luckily underneath the hype there are some great use cases for them. If you’re splitting up a monolith codebase into smaller specialised chunks, extracting a long running queue to its own system, or even using particular pieces of code in a different programming language. You always have to solve one...
As you might know, I co-organise a PHP meetup called: PHP Antwerp. Some time ago we had one of our talented speakers: Joeri Sebrechts talk about “What every developer should know about time, no excuses“ (If you ever have the chance to see it, I wholly recommend it). In this talk, he mentions briefly the Y2k38 problem. A bug that will wreck havoc...