Book Review: Continuous Architecture in Practice

I just finished reading this book and decided to share my experience with it.

About the Book

Continuous Architecture in Practice is a sequel to Continuous Architecture both written by Murat Erder, Pierre Pureur, and Eion Woods. The authors attempt to address feedback from their 1st book by navigating the reader through the Trade Financs eXchange (TFX) case study.

The book starts with a brief introduction to the core concepts of Continuous Architecture, including its 6 principles, as well as its essential activities:

1. Focus on quality attributes
2. Drive architectural decisions
3. Know your technical debt
4. Implement feedback loops

From then on the book switches focus to common architectural concerns:

1. Data
2. Security
3. Scalability
4. Performance
5. Resilience
6. Emerging Technologies

Each concern is tackled in a separate chapter that features an introductory quote, a definition along with some historical context, a list of issues an someone should keep in mind when architecting for that concern, a list of tactics, and a further reading section.

My Opinion

Overall, I liked reading the book, it gave me a lot of inspiration and a desire to learn more about particular topics. The book assumes a certain level of familiarity with software engineering which helps it focus on general concerns and avoid implemention specific details.

I particularly liked the Emerging Technlogies chapter as it offers a healthy view on AI, ML, and shared ledgers. It helps remove the fairy dust that's blinding our industry, and instead focuses on meaningful changes that actually provide value to a product.

Also, as someone with experience in software security I appreciated the focus on shifting left security concerns.

Who Should Read This

In my opinion, every software engineer can benefit from reading this at some point in their career. However, I wouldn't recommend it to a junior, if you are not already familiar with the topics covered in the book it could be intemediating.

PS I am not affiliated with the book or its authors in any way. I am just a person that read a book they liked wanted to share my experience.