"Righting Software" with Juval Lowy

Published: Feb. 12, 2020, 7 a.m.

Our guest for this episode is author, teacher, and keynote speaker, Juval Lowy. Recognized by Microsoft as a software legend, Juval has been in the software industry for over 20 years and is definitely one of the world’s top experts and industry leaders. Andrew, Fahad, and Juval discuss insights, techniques, and breakthroughs, in architecture, project design, development process, and technology. They also talk about Juval’s latest book, “Righting Software.” Take some notes along the way as you listen in to this Software Architecture Master Class

Hosts: Fahad Shoukat and Andrew Wolfe

Guest: Juval Lowy

Juval Lowy is the founder of IDesign and a master software architect. Over the past 20 years, Juval has led the industry in architecture and project design with some of his ideas such as microservices serving as the foundation of software design and development. He has helped countless companies deliver quality software on schedule and on budget and has mentored hundreds of architects across the globe, sharing his insights, techniques, and breakthroughs, in architecture, project design, development process, and technology. Juval participated in the Microsoft internal strategic design reviews and is a frequent speaker at the major international software development conferences. He also published several bestsellers, and his recent book is Righting Software (Addison-Wesley, 2019). Juval conducts Master Classes around the world, teaching thousands of professionals the skills required of modern software architects and how to take an active role in the design, process, and technology. Microsoft recognized Juval as a Software Legend as one of the world's top experts and industry leaders.

Show Notes

Software Architecture

  • Architecture can be summed up as business enablement. It's easy to describe software architecture, but difficult to practice.
  • We see a high turnover rate in software architecture because of the comprises. You start out with big goals but give in to expediency, deadlines, and excuses. That erodes you overtime. IF you don't compromise and insist on doing it right, you can last longer over time and not burn out.
  • "Earn Your Complexity" is the idea of starting simple. As long as you keep it simple filling your head with all the things you need right now. It's knowing where you're at and knowing where you want to be over time. You can apply that to architecture and code and it will relieve the pressure.
  • Software systems used to be complicated, but now they are complex systems. You lose in engineering when you give into complexity. If the project has an unknown level of complexity, it should never be done.

"Righting Software"

  • It focuses on saving our capsized industry. The reason the industry is so bad is because we've lowered the bar. Success today in software is anything that doesn't bankrupt the company right now. If you define success correctly, then 95% of projects actually fail.
  • The objective of the book is to help people succeed and become mature engineers.
  • To fix the software industry, we just have to implement sound, simple engineering principles that every mechanical engineer or bridge-builder knows, into how we build software.
  • In software, there's no physical waste like in a physical engineering project. It doesn't mean that there is no waste, it means that the waste is hidden. The way to solve it is by adhering to the simple engineering principles.
  • In our world, people are more interested in doing agile, than being agile. Being agile takes a lot of hard work.<