We all use patterns to create—software architectures, product solutions, and even our organisations. We’ve also gained valuable insights through actually building things. This premise of this workshop is that everyone has valuable design knowledge worth sharing and the potential to share that knowledge more broadly. And yet, do we think of ourselves as pattern authors? If you grapple with questions of how to best share your expertise with others, and have an itch to communicate your experiences, this workshop is for you.
The driving force behind writing patterns and design heuristics is to describe proven practice and experience, to educate others and enable them to leverage those experiences in making their own creations—whether it be about building microservice architectures, better team practices, or more sustainable communities.
What You’ll Learn
- This workshop gives you the opportunity to immerse yourself in the latest techniques for finding, organising, and describing software-related patterns and heuristics. There will be hands-on activities for identifying and formulating patterns. You’ll learn options for writing patterns. You’ll learn how to write new patterns, refresh old patterns, and what it takes to create pattern collections and languages. You’ll also learn how to add your ideas into the existing pattern ecosystem as well as how to critically assess patterns you encounter in the wild.
- You will emerge from this workshop with an enlarged perspective on patterns and design heuristics and a starter kit for further writing: your own set of proto patterns.
- The workshop consists of a mix of discussion, group pattern writing, and pattern mining practices. Attendees will learn about relationship between patterns and heuristics, and relative value of various patterns. You’ll look at pattern maps and pattern sequences. And you will participate in interactive exercises that will start you on your journey of writing your own patterns and pattern languages.
Prerequisites
- The only requirements are an open mind, ready to absorb the patterns experience, and ideas about writing your own patterns. Bring any pattern ideas you may want to brainstorm, such as Organisational, Teams, Software, Agile, Change, Domain Models, Modelling Practices, Testing, etc.
- Bring a laptop.