Leading a Software Architecture Revolution - "Part 1: Creating Awareness, Preparing and Measuring"

Software architecture revolution can be defined as the process of making profound, large-scale changes to the fundamental structures of a software system to improve its attributes, such as availability, scalability, and maintainability, or to enable new requirements that are incompatible with the current capabilities. Architectural revolution usually demands substantial effort from the organization and thus depends on effective leadership to be successful. However, while there is plenty of research on the technical aspects of any architectural transformation, not much is available on the leadership perspective. The role of managers and other leaders include championing the revolution initiative, prioritizing activities, negotiating the allocation of people and resources, evaluating results, taking corrective actions, and reporting achievements. This paper draws from practical experiences to describe patterns to improve the effectiveness of architectural revolution initiatives.