Engineering the Future of Software
Feb 25–26, 2018: Training
Feb 26–28, 2018: Tutorials & Conference
New York, NY

Math and measurement in the management of architecture

Michelle Brush (Cerner Corporation)
10:45am–12:15pm Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Secondary topics:  Best Practice
Average rating: ****.
(4.73, 11 ratings)

Who is this presentation for?

  • Software architects and engineering executives

Prerequisite knowledge

  • A basic understanding of statistics
  • Experience working on a large-scale system running in production

What you'll learn

  • Learn how to assess what aspects of the system your organization should value and therefore constantly measure
  • Discover approaches for measuring for accountability and improvement of those values in an architecture

Description

In architecture, we’re building a system to fulfill expectations across a number of system attributes: scalability, reliability, performance, and so on. When possible, the valued attributes are measured based on numbers, and sometimes those expectations are coded into SLAs or SLOs.

Inherent in the problems the system is solving are other attributes like cardinality, dimensionality, capacity, volume, complexity, and throughput. Those attributes impact our ability to deliver to expectations. Sometimes we also measure them.

Michelle Brush explores the numbers, functions, and constants that can be used to measure and influence your architectural decisions. Michelle provides examples of how organizations can determine what attributes they really value in their architectures and shares practical approaches for how to measure those attributes using mostly available data. Along the way, she discusses what a healthy attitude toward architectural measurement and accountability looks like and the guidelines you should set to ensure you’re measuring what matters to your organization.

Photo of Michelle Brush

Michelle Brush

Cerner Corporation

Michelle Brush is engineering director for Cerner Corporation, where she leads teams that develop the platform for ingesting stream and batch data specific to Cerner’s Population Health solutions. A math geek turned computer geek with 15 years of software development experience, Michelle has developed algorithms and data structures for search, compression, and data mining in both embedded and enterprise systems. She is the chapter leader for the Kansas City chapter of Girl Develop It.

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Comments

Chaim Klar | PROGRAMMING ARCHITECT
03/13/2018 7:22pm EDT

HI Michelle, your session was so valuable, please share your slides so I can take home the messages and implement them,

Thanks!