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SE Radio 638: Nick Tune and Jean-Georges Perrin on Architecture Modernization
Nick Tune and Jean-Georges Perrin join host Giovanni Asproni to talk about their proposed approach to modernizing legacy systems. The episode starts with some high-level perspective to set context for the approach described in their book, Architecture Modernization (Manning, 2024). From there, the discussion turns to important details, including criteria for deciding which aspects to revisit; some of the activities, processes, and tools; and the importance of data engineering in modernization efforts. Nick and Jean-Georges describe how to successfully implement an architecture-modernization effort, and how to fit that work with the teams' other priorities. The episode finishes with some warnings about the typical risks associated with modernizing a legacy system, and suggestions on how to mitigate them. This episode is sponsored by QA Wolf.
Nick Tune and Jean-Georges Perrin join host Giovanni Asproni to talk about their proposed approach to modernizing legacy systems. The episode starts with some high-level perspective to set context for the approach described in their book, Architecture Modernization (Manning, 2024). From there, the discussion turns to important details, including criteria for deciding which aspects to revisit; some of the activities, processes, and tools; and the importance of data engineering in modernization efforts. Nick and Jean-Georges describe how to successfully implement an architecture-modernization effort, and how to fit that work with the teams’ other priorities. The episode finishes with some warnings about the typical risks associated with modernizing a legacy system, and suggestions on how to mitigate them.
This episode is sponsored by QA Wolf.
Show Notes
Articles and Resources
- Book: Architecture Modernization (Manning, 2024)
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Transcript
Transcript brought to you by IEEE Software magazine and IEEE Computer Society. This transcript was automatically generated. To suggest improvements in the text, please contact [email protected] and include the episode number.
Giovanni Asproni 00:00:51 Welcome to Software Engineering Radio. I’m your host Giovanni Asproni and today I’ll be discussing Architecture Modernization with Nick Tune and Jean-Georges Perrin. Nick works with the product and technology leaders to map strategy, model domains, design, architecture, and build continuous delivery teams. He’s the author of Principles and Practices of Domain Driven Design and co-author with Jean-Georges Perrin of Architecture Modernization. Jean-Georges is JGP for short, is the Chief Innovation Officer at ABI Data. The chair of the open data contract standard is a co-founder of the IDA user group and author of multiple books including † Implementing Data Mesh Sparking Action, 2nd edition , and of course † Architecture Modernization with Nick. Nick and Jean-Georges, welcome to Software Engineering Radio. Is there anything I missed that you’d like to add?
Jean-Georges Perrin 00:01:41 Well, thank you. Thank you for having us. Just to show off a little bit, I’m also a lifetime IBM Champion. I’m a PayPal Champion and recently I’ve been data mesh MVP — and MVP stands for Most Valuable Player, not minimum viable product here.
Giovanni Asproni 00:01:57 Nick, anything to add?
Nick Tune 00:02:00 I think I came like third in a hundred meters at primary school, at Sports Day once.
Giovanni Asproni 00:02:05 .
Jean-Georges Perrin 00:02:06 You beat me.
Giovanni Asproni 00:02:07 So let’s talk now about the subject of this podcast, so about architecture modernization. So let’s start with, some context for our listeners. So my first question is, what is architecture modernization as you propose it? Is it a set of activities, is a process, is a methodology or something else?
Nick Tune 00:02:26 So the general concept is as we build software systems, they get older and the world around us changes, new technologies become available and new patterns and practices and ways of doing architecture become available. Our company’s business model changes and so we have a software system that is quite behind what’s possible in the modern day. So modernization is really removing those disadvantages of the old systems by using modern practices, telling and thinking I would say. So it’s really a topic or a theme. I wouldn’t say it’s a process. I wouldn’t say it’s a technology. I wouldn’t say it’s a very specific thing, it’s just the process or the act of doing something in a general sense.
Giovanni Asproni 00:03:08 Okay. So is it aim at large scale changes or incremental improvements? Because from reading the book the way it is described there is also the concept of creating a group of people that will supervise these changes and will help the teams in doing this. So reading it seems to be a large scale and they already something that is a kind of a big thing or is it more incremental improvements in day-to-day work?
Nick Tune 00:03:34 Well, I think it depends on the context, but I mean for a lot of companies, nobody wants to do modernization. Nobody wants to spend three, five years fixing their legacy systems. But at the same time, business leaders want to be able to build new products to expand to new customer segments and new countries. And when the legacy system doesn’t allow you to do that, sometimes you have to do large scale changes. Obviously, we would all prefer to do smaller day-to-day changes and if you have good discipline and good practices and you don’t build up technical debt, yeah you can do this on a more gradual ongoing basis and not need to do big projects.
Giovanni Asproni 00:04:10 Okay. And it’s also kind of one of activity or an ongoing one or a bit of both. What I mean is does it have a kind of a start and an ending and then you say now we have a modern architecture or it’s something that you continuously do to keep the architecture somehow relevant?
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