Committe architectures

I have observed that sometimes an architecture tends to get defined by a committee of all stakeholders (or representatives for them) rather than an architecture team. This in itself may not be bad but there are some things that seems to happen when this is the case:
First the architecture tends to be defined by a set of separate decisions that solves separate problems the stakeholders have. There is no overall vision of what the architecture should be. A lack of what Frederick P. Brooks call conceptual integrity.
Second the balancing of quality attributes seem to be an average of everything. The architecture is not really good on anything (maintainability comes to mind). On the other hand no quality attribute seems to be totally forgotten or neglected.
Third the description of the architecture is done at low level, e.g. a design or implementation level because this is what a majority of stakeholders are used to in doing their usual work.

"The other" car manufacturer...

"The other" car manufacturer has a new owner after General Motors. Good for them! We need the local competition to stay alert. Read the news here.

Experiencing To Troubleshoot the Defective Fuel Pump

It sucks when the fuel pump have defect. Because your engine will have empty after how many seconds in travel. I experience this when we are traveling from our City to the Province of Cebu. After we enjoying our travel. In the Middle of Enjoying. The engine suddenly stops. What the heck. Where all shock because we don't know yet how to diagnose for troubleshooting. After we rest for an hour. And starting engine again. The engine Start. its amazing. But after a kilometer travel. Suddenly stops again. Were continuous accelerating but still empty. Until we come in our destination. After we consult in the technician. We found out that our fuel pump are defective. Need to replace.

Overhauling 3 Cylinder Engine

I was on overhauling 3 cylinders engine. First i am disassembling the Engine assembly, and then i was going to remove  the oil pan. Then removing the oil strainer for the cause not to be tampered when removing another parts. Then i removed the crankshaft pulley (because there was no timing belt already). Because we buy that in aftermarket. But it still in good condition. After i remove the camshaft pulley because we are replacing the cam lobe because it was have to bad condition. It will not in standard measurement or out of his slide parts because of rust.Important of the parts or bolts to systematize. So that after you will perform overhauling. It will easily put back from where they are. After that we replace the camlobe into the head cylinder. But the stock camlobe are not long as we replace from the aftermarket engine. We replace that for the reason it will have a longer lobe than the stock. So that the distributor assembly can put after it.

My experienced while im studying

Most of the technicians don't have knowledge about automobile wiring. I studied Automotive Services National Competency II. And this only for 5 months and every topics are very important. I was willing to know about how to repair some parts of the engine. And now i know how to overhaul engines, how to grind the valves, and how to know if the the pistons are not good. Thanks to god i know all this.:)

Show off your Stunt

Stunt Car Show

Show off your Cars

Chicago Car show from Fox.com

Publications in the pipeline

The blog originally had the intention to cover topics I'm intersted to research. So here is a short status update of what I am doing right now in my research project.

Together with a fellow researcher I made an extensive interview series with architects at two major automotive companies. So far the data from these interviews is used for 3 papers which will be submitted this spring:

1. A compararative case study on how two similar companies work with maintaining architctures.
2. A short paper describing how archtiects view themselves in terms of skills, experience, attitudes, etc.
3. Another paper which I'm not authoring

Last year I made extensive observations of architectural decisions for the architecture of the next generation electrical system at Volvo Cars. So far the data from these observed decisions will be used for 2 papers:

1. A new classification scheme for archtiecture decsions, based on empirical data
2. A case study of the 80 decisions observed at Volvo Cars

I also have an idea about an interesting AUTOSAR-paper which partly will use information from a student thesis project I will supervise later this spring.

Car Show in Tokyo

Alien model of Nissan Pivo 2

Object-oriented programming in C

In the automotive industry C is the totally dominating programming language. I guess this is because of the limited resources in automotive-specific CPUs but also because of tradition among programmers, if you have a program that is proven by use you don't rewrite that just because there is some new language around.
And to be honest, it still is hard to beat C if you want real-time properties and a garbage collection that don't risk overflowing memory.

But if you want to keep C but write programs in a more object-oriented style how do you do? It is not as hard as one would think.
Here are some web pages which give some useful tips. Note that they are not always compatible!

• Phil's guide to object-oriented ANSI C
• Object-oriented programming in C by Paul Field
• Object-oriented programming in ANSI- C by Axel-Tobias Schreiner

I have reviewed code for several ECUs used in Volvo cars, and none have used an object-oriented style. The reason I bring up object-oriented programming in C in this blog is that it simplifies the implementation of many patterns, the subject is not really new...

Earlier in The School

We are performing the parts of differential. We are disassembling a differential. And familiarize each parts. And then we inspect if it is defective or not. After that we put grease in the break drum bushing.

Show off your Cars

The new model of Hyundai Sonata

Show off your Cars

The best volkswagen i've ever seen. Its Pretty cool.

Show off your Cars

The Car Show with the hot girls.

Empowered architects

In the course on project management and leadership for PhD students we are talking about the role of the project leader. The lecturer Max Rapp Ricciardi writes in an article by about empowerment and refers to an article by Quinn & Spreitzer.

Anyway, he mentions four characteristics of empowered people:

• They feel they are masters of their own destiny (they can do the work without management interference)
• The understand the totality of the business they are operating in
• They have confidence and a feeling of doing a good job
• They are convinced they can influence others, which is the opposite of learned helplessness

If you are to be an efficient architect I think you need to have all of these four characteristics, or in short you need to be empowered!
An architect which works in an organisation where he or she is not empowered have probably little chance of doing a successful job. I would even go so far to ask why such an organisation would even bother with having such a role?

Show off your Cars at France and Italy

This cars showing are old school. But its cool.

Show off your Cars

The cars entering the show.Saleen S7, two Ferrari F50s, F50 GT1, two Ferrari 599 GTBs, Tesla Roadster, Lamborghini Murcielago LP640, Audi R8, 2008 Dodge Viper 675 horsepower, 288 GTO, Porsche GT3 RS, SuperAmerics and many more cars showing.

Show off your Ride

Thanks PDD for pimpin' my ride.

Show off your Cars

The videos from here a Cadillac Car win.

Show off your Cars

Car Showing at Danville D' Elegance

Maserati MC12
Saleen S7
Porsche Carrera GT
Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 Roadster
Lamborghini Gallardo Coupe & Spyder
Lambo. Diablo SV & VT 6.0
Ford GT Heritage Edition
Ferrari 430 Scuderia Coupe
Ferrari Challenge Stradale
Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano
Ferrari F430 Coupe and Spider F1
Ferrari 612 Scaglietti
Ferrari F355 Challenge & GTS & Coupe/Spi
Ferrari 360 Modena Coupe & Spider
Ferrari Testarossa 512 TR
Maserati Granturismo S and GT
Maserati Gransport MC Victory
Maserati Trofeo
Porsche 997 GT3 RS
Aston Martin DB7 Zagato Coupe
Aston Martin DB9 and AMV8 V8 Vantage
Ultima GTR S
Ariel Atom
Bentley Continental GTC

And many more cars in this events.