Chapter #01 | Chapter #02 | Chapter #05
Facilitating collaborative modeling
Collaborative modeling tools alone do not guarantee effective collaboration; someone needs to guide people during collaboration: a facilitator. Fortunately, there are techniques and practices you can use to facilitate effective collaborative design, whether you’re a project leader, a business stakeholder, or an individual technical contributor.
We see it as vital for teams to take ownership of their collaborative design decisions, a lesson learned from less-than-ideal experiences. We experienced frustration when provided with an unrealistic solution by an architect from above (in the famous Ivory Tower meme). Our own valuable suggestions, unknown to the architect, were overlooked.
This book is about looking at software design in a new (or different) way. Enabling teams to take ownership of software design and architecture in direct collaboration with their stakeholders. Collaborative software design is not just from a technical perspective, but also from a business perspective, all whilst taking into account the social dynamics that affect both collaborative modeling sessions and design decisions. This is what makes this book different.