Factories 201

Edward has started a new series of posts about factory basics called 'Factories 201' , and he has kicked that off with a post entitled "What are they (concretely)?" Which I think is such a fantastic idea to get back to grass roots, and addressing the wider community. I am going to have to participate, and pick up the gauntlet he dropped so squarely in my lap.

For some time I have been involved deep down in the guts of this stuff probably so much so that my posts have only reached a small minority of people in this space. Just the length of them is scaring people off I think, but also the level of some of them is right up there too - perhaps more at the 300-400 level (to using this US rating system). My real intended audience is the mainstream general architect/developers, because it is with these guys I spend most of my time sharing their pain, and it's these guys who are to champion and carry this burden in the future. (Although we are all hoping it is the helium-filled, carbon-fibre version of that burden).

I am hoping, with this new series, we are going to take a little step back and start from the top again, and focus upon the 'down to earth' issues and aid understanding of this approach at a more 'accessible' level.

Many more of you are entering this domain this year, and there is not that much around to help you out with general understanding of the practical processes and techniques needed to succeed in this domain. Most of the info right now is either highly-technical stuff or highly-academic and too abstract, and the communities are not really well established enough yet to accommodate the wider audiences.

Neither Edward nor myself are what they call 'white-collar' architects, we both work at the coal-face of this stuff, and we feel that most of you do too, so that's the level we aim to keep this stuff at. Although we do hope to progress your understanding and vocabulary in this domain. Hopefully we can plug the gap missing in the communities at present.

You might want to start with Edward's post "Software Factories- Where to start-" to get some basic background context, and then move to his starting post in the series  "Factories 201 - What are they (concretely)?"

I will follow up shortly, and join Edward in the '201' series.