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Thursday, November 14, 2013 - 10:15am - 11:30am
Design & Code
BT2

Contextually-Driven System Architecture Reviews

When the World Trade Center collapsed, the telephone switching systems in the basement correctly diagnosed which lines were still working and continued to connect calls for several days using backup power. One factor contributing to this remarkable product reliability was the AT&T/Bell Labs practice of early systems architecture reviews. Michael Dedolph shares an architecture review method based on the Bell Labs Systems Architecture Review Board (SARB) process and discusses how that method was institutionalized and managed. The review method is a team process that uses a problem statement developed by the project as the basis for the review. The method is "low tech" and portable. SARB-style architecture reviews can be easily and flexibly tailored to your context. The flexibility of the method makes it suitable for many kinds of systems and problem domains. Take away an appreciation for the method and see if it might be useful in your organization.

Michael Dedolph, Levi Deal Consulting

Michael Dedolph is self-employed as a consultant and innkeeper. For the past seven years, Michael led quality process improvement efforts at CSC and Lucent. Previously, he was a systems architecture review leader at Bell Labs (Lucent) and facilitated numerous risk identification and project retrospective sessions. Prior to 1997 Michael worked in the Risk and Process programs at the SEI where he was the technical lead for teams that developed the SCE and CBA-IPI appraisal methods.

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