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Why architects should think about test and deployment automation..

Expectations for the architect

Unit tests and basic CI are well-known, widely adopted and should be part of any development process. If not present, you, as an architect, should introduce them, but hopefully the dev-team can take the responsibility themselves. Architects usually manage to stay out of the way and everything is fine - at the application level.

Developers working at an application seldom take responsibility for system-wide concerns. And they shouldn't. This is the responsibility of the system (!) architect. It thus falls to the architect to ensure that the system as a whole can be deployed and tested properly.

So what should an architect do?

Strive to adhere to the following guidelines:

  • Deployment should be simple: Both system administrators and developers should be able to install and configure any service. Prefer simple to fast, because brain-time is more expensive than processing power.

  • For every new release, the application will be deployed at least once, probably a bunch of times, so the ROI is excellent.

  • Loose coupling between services: it should be possible to test service A and service B together without deploying service C, D, E, F, G, etc. This allows iterative testing and promotes a clean design.

  • Continuously integrate services: for each new version of a service, deploy it and test that it works together with the rest of the system.

"First, when we deploy software, we are exposing ourselves to the accumulated technical risk embodied in the code. By deploying one component at a time, we spread technical risk out over a longer period of time. Every component has its own chance to fail in production, letting us harden each one independently."

"It's rare to find a technique that simultaneously provides higher commercial value and better architectural qualities, but early deployment of individual components offers both."

Src: Skyscrapers aren't scalable

Why follow these guidelines?

Simply because it is the most efficient approach to create big systems that work. The alternatives are much more costly and take much more time.

Why don't architects follow these guidelines?

Probably because most architects don't know the concepts or what tool support is available.