Home GOTO Experts Allen Holub

Allen Holub has been writing software since dinosaurs roamed the earth, starting in high school on an IBM 360/65 enthroned in its air-conditioned glass-walled room and fed punch cards by white-clad priests. Since then, he's written two operating systems and several compilers and contributed to several commercial and open-source products, all without punch cards. He's been a CTO for early-stage startups and a Principal Architect for a medium-sized one. He's authored a gazillion articles and a dozen books, some used as texts at U.C. Berkeley, MIT, Cal Tech, and IIT. He was a contributing editor at Dr. Dobb’s Journal and JavaWorld.

Allen has an international reputation in practical software development processes and software architecture. He has worked as an independent consultant for decades, helping companies become more effective at writing software and working with all levels of the organization, from the CEO to sitting down and mobbing with the teams. He also teaches classes on software architecture and effective development practices. He was the Chan-Norris Distinguished (no less) Professor of Computer Science at Mills College.

Allen plays the piano, rides a bicycle, and flies small airplanes, but not at the same time.

Warm up with his conversation about software with Uncle Bob: A Path to Better Programming • Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin & Allen Holub

Upcoming masterclasses featuring Allen Holub

Incremental Architecture: Building Domain-focused Systems that Welcome Change

Agility is impossible if your architecture makes even trivial changes insanely difficult, and the most flexible architectues are those designed to grow incrementally as a system evolves rather than being defined in one giant up-front phase. As we evolve, our architecture must remain coherent and easily withstand the stress of changing requirements. Incremental approaches are the most effective, lowest-cost, lowest-risk way to build a solid product that can easily adapt to customer needs.

In this hands-on workshop, you'll learn how to develop a coherent architecture that grows incrementally as we learn. You'll learn a complete process for designing incrementally, starting with user stories and ending with code. You'll come away with a solid understanding of how to build incremental-friendly architectures (and products).

In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn to start from “-ilities” and incremental-friendly patterns. You’ll learn how to focus the architecture on customer needs through the user’s stories. You’ll get hands-on experience with practical techniques like Design by Coding (a way to design incrementally literally while you're coding) and Domain-Driven-Design/Event Storming (a way to implement complex reactive systems such as choreographed microservice systems that directly reflect the domain so easily adapt as the domain changes). You’ll also learn about ensemble (mob) programming, which we’ll use in the exercises, and Architectural TDD.

Part 1

  • Working incrementally
  • Integrating code and product development
  • The inspect-and-adapt loop.
  • Incremental-friendly architectural patterns.
    • Layered architecture
    • Hexagonal (MicroKernel) architecture
    • Component architecture
    • Event-driven architecture
  • Exercise: Selecting core architecture from patterns
  • Exercise: Realizing -ilities
  • Exercise: Creating Problem Statements
  • Exercise: Capturing the User’s Story

Part 2

  • Domain-Driven Design
  • Event-driven systems (recap)
  • Lightweight messaging systems
  • Exercise: Using Event Storming to create dynamic event-driven systems.
Wednesday Dec 11 @ 09:00 | Sydney, Australia

Reserve your spot now

Upcoming conference sessions featuring Allen Holub

Getting Buy-In: Overcoming Larman's Law

Larman's Law states, "Organizations are implicitly optimized to avoid changing the status quo…" The third law is particularly relevant: 'Any change initiative will be derided as “purist,” "theoretical," “revolutionary," " “religion,” and “needing pragmatic customization for local concerns”—which deflects from addressing weaknesses and the manager/specialist status quo.'

You need to overcome that resistance to use innovative approaches like no-estimation or mob/ensemble programming.

Devs, however, almost always go about that the wrong way. Senior management is rarely interested in the mechanics of what you're doing. They're interested in the bottom line, how the new approaches change how the business is managed, and whether the inevitable disruption is worth it.

In this talk, you'll learn how to convince the “suits” (and your clients) that innovation is a good thing. You'll learn how to create a business case for innovation that overcomes the resistance of Larman's Law.

Thursday Dec 12 @ 16:45 @ YOW! Sydney 2024

Get conference pass

Getting Buy-In: Overcoming Larman's Law

Larman's Law states, "Organizations are implicitly optimized to avoid changing the status quo…" The third law is particularly relevant: 'Any change initiative will be derided as “purist,” "theoretical," “revolutionary," " “religion,” and “needing pragmatic customization for local concerns”—which deflects from addressing weaknesses and the manager/specialist status quo.'

You need to overcome that resistance to use innovative approaches like no-estimation or mob/ensemble programming.

Devs, however, almost always go about that the wrong way. Senior management is rarely interested in the mechanics of what you're doing. They're interested in the bottom line, how the new approaches change how the business is managed, and whether the inevitable disruption is worth it.

In this talk, you'll learn how to convince the “suits” (and your clients) that innovation is a good thing. You'll learn how to create a business case for innovation that overcomes the resistance of Larman's Law.

Monday Dec 9 @ 16:45 @ YOW! Brisbane 2024

Get conference pass

Getting Buy-In: Overcoming Larman's Law

Larman's Law states, "Organizations are implicitly optimized to avoid changing the status quo…" The third law is particularly relevant: 'Any change initiative will be derided as “purist,” "theoretical," “revolutionary," " “religion,” and “needing pragmatic customization for local concerns”—which deflects from addressing weaknesses and the manager/specialist status quo.'

You need to overcome that resistance to use innovative approaches like no-estimation or mob/ensemble programming.

Devs, however, almost always go about that the wrong way. Senior management is rarely interested in the mechanics of what you're doing. They're interested in the bottom line, how the new approaches change how the business is managed, and whether the inevitable disruption is worth it.

In this talk, you'll learn how to convince the “suits” (and your clients) that innovation is a good thing. You'll learn how to create a business case for innovation that overcomes the resistance of Larman's Law.

Friday Dec 6 @ 09:00 @ YOW! Melbourne 2024

Get conference pass

Content featuring Allen Holub

45:20
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, Scrum is Agile
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, Scrum is Agile
GOTOpia Europe 2020
40:41
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, Scrum is Agile
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, Scrum is Agile
GOTO Chicago 2020
GOTO Book Club Highlights Part 1
GOTO Book Club Highlights Part 1
GOTO Book Club
The Path to Better Programming
The Path to Better Programming
GOTO Book Club
55:53
What Do You Wish You Had Known When You Started as a Developer?
What Do You Wish You Had Known When You Started as a Developer?
GOTO Book Club
45:20
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, Scrum is Agile
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, Scrum is Agile
GOTO Copenhagen 2021

Past masterclasses featuring Allen Holub

Incremental Architecture: Building Domain-focused Systems that Welcome Change | YOW! Melbourne 2024

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