what was on Flow and what will happen
Next week we will hold an online conference Flow 2024. And today we opened all the videos from the previous one Flow 2023. So in this post you can see past reports and find out what new ones will be about.
What happened: videos of the last Flow
All recordings are already available on YouTube channel. Here we will give just three examples to give you an idea of what you can expect.
In the world of analysis, many already know Yuri Kupriyanov (for example, from the Telegram channel “System shift“). His report was about the fact that in practice analysts are engaged not so much in analysis as in designing systems – and about what needs to be understood in this regard:
The industry is developing and changing: for example, analysts are increasingly faced with ML projects. What do you need to understand in this changing world? Pavel Filonov explained what difficulties arise when working with the requirements of ML projects, and how you can deal with them:
We hold a number of IT conferences (for developers, testers and more), so we are close to all the technical specifics like code. Although an analyst is not required to write code in the same way as a developer, it is helpful to understand SQL or regular expressions. Tatyana Oshurkova talked about regular training not “in a vacuum,” but in relation to the specific tasks of an analyst:
What will happen: reports from the next Flow
On March 12, you will be able to see a number of new reports online – what will they be about? We show descriptions of them all, divided into five thematic blocks:
Requirements
Integrations
Architecture
Data and ML
Other
Requirements
Analytical Jenga: how to reduce the cost of controlling changes in a large system and not break it
Irina Gertovskaya
Irina will talk about a method that helps track changes in conditions, restrictions, circumstances, even strategies and not miss their impact on decisions in large systems.
When designing and evolving systems, change is inevitable. And when the connections between system artifacts reach tens of thousands or more, the cost of tracing often exceeds what is possible. And changes that are not taken into account in time can turn out to be critical.
Irina will share her experience working in development teams and her vision based on the 4+1 architectural model – a development life cycle model in systems and software engineering. She will show how, using this method, you can reduce the cost of change control and not overlook potential inconsistencies and design errors.
It will be useful for analysts, testers, and managers.
Mikhail Maksimov
Independent expert
Denis Bogdanov
BIA Technologies
Let's look at specific examples of requirements together with experts. Let's discuss what's wrong with them and what this can lead to. Let's think about how to do it better.
Let's talk about how cross-review and the involvement of development representatives and competence centers affect the quality of requirements. Let's consider one of the checklist options for verifying requirements.
It will be useful for analysts of various levels, as we will analyze not only typical errors, but also process system imperfections and options for eliminating them.
Burn your system requirements. User requirements are the key to a successful product
Innokenty Bodrov
Finom
Innokenty will tell you why analysts and product owners should primarily focus on user requirements, rather than go into deep development of detailed system requirements or detailed design down to fields and their types.
The speaker will examine the two most popular formats: Use Case and User Story. It will show examples of functional specifications focused on user and business requirements. He will also give a number of tips on how to work with a team if they don’t like this format.
Design pitfalls and how to deal with them
Sergey Nuzhnenko
Poscredit
Sergey will tell you how to avoid falling into many common traps when building the design process.
Let's discuss what approaches there are to comparing IT projects and where to look to understand how different our new project is.
He will also tell you about the main secret of design: it is impossible to create a single list of steps leading to success. The design process is structured in four orthogonal areas, the combination of which creates a huge number of options. After the report, you will be able to improve your design process by looking at your project through the lens of the models and principles from the report.
Integrations
AsyncAPI for describing asynchronous integrations
Dmitry Ulanov
NOTE
Dmitry will give a definition of AsyncAPI and its main characteristics. It will compare AsyncAPI with other specifications, in particular OpenAPI. He will also show examples of using AsyncAPI and talk about available tools and libraries that support working with AsyncAPI.
Workshop: Integration Design and Non-Functional Requirements
Andrey Burakov
NextWay
During the workshop, we will analyze what and how influences the choice of integration technology:
Let's briefly look at integration technologies.
Let's get acquainted with a practical case.
We will design integration processes between systems.
Let's choose an integration technology for each interaction.
Let's discuss what happened.
For analysts with system integration experience and familiarity with HTTP services and message brokers.
Architecture
Enterprise architecture model on a graph
Roman Tsirulnikov
YuMoney
Let's consider building an enterprise architecture model based on TOGAF/ArchiMate, which contains the layers Technology, Applications, Business, Strategy.
The complexity of the model is limited by the ability to display it in the form of diagrams. The number of entities in an organization model is such that it is, in principle, impossible to reflect it in the form of a diagram or a set of diagrams. Graph DBMS technology comes to the rescue, in which you can place a multidimensional model of entity-relationships and carry out analytical queries on the model.
Using an example, let's look at what YuMoney did when solving the problem of building a business architecture layer. Let's learn how to model the relationships and dependencies of a company's systems, services and products.
Analyst or Solution Architect?
Anna Ovzyak
Alfa Bank
Maxim Smirnov
Large organizations are always short of IT architects. Therefore, the desire of an analyst to retrain as an architect is usually welcomed. But is this always the right choice? What limitations, potential risks and unobvious consequences does it involve?
Let's talk about what it takes for an analyst to become a solution architect, and what might stand in the way.
Data and ML
Analyst's use of generative neural networks
Andrey Moskalenko
Reksoft
Andrey will highlight key aspects of the integration of modern generative neural networks with the practice of system and business analysis.
Generative neural networks provide new opportunities to optimize the workflows of systems and business analysts. During the report, the speaker will review the principles of operation of generative neural networks, basic trained models, as well as practical examples of using generative models. He will address ethical and legal issues related to the use of generative neural networks in systems analysis. He will also discuss with you possible prospects for using this technology.
You will gain an understanding of how generative neural networks can be an effective tool for solving both routine and non-routine problems.
Other
Interview with Maxim Smirnov: Architectural practices for analysts
Let's talk with IT architect Maxim Smirnov about the roles of an architect and an analyst – we'll find something in common and draw a line between their functions.
Let's discuss the value of the activities of these specialists and the interpretation of their functionality in different companies. Including those where they save money on the architect, and the analyst works for two.
Let's look at the division of roles in enterprise and product companies and find out without which artifacts normal communication between an analyst and an architect would not work out.
Let's discuss the creation of domestic software and the role of analysts in this process. About the pros and cons of in-house development, the pain of working on an MVP, and Russian tools for analysts and development.
Let's see what software is missing in Russia and what requirements there are for it, including in Russian operating systems and other large projects.
Workshop: technological trends and PESTEL analysis
Andrey Dmitriev
JUG Ru Group
We get used to working with the tools we know, so learning alternative practices and approaches occurs infrequently and, rather, is forced.
We invite you, in small group format, to work on searching and identifying new things that can help you in your current work. To do this, we will use a couple of marketing tools, apply them to your experience and horizons, and evaluate weak and strong signals of technology trends.
The outcome of the meeting will be a set of ideas, practices and alternatives that you can use to increase your productivity and the speed of your team.
Business Analysis: Craft or Art
Alexander Belin
IIBA
Do you think the business analysis we do is a craft or an art? Alexander Belin will share his vision of how to transform business analysis into engineering.
Conclusion
Why participate in an online conference if we end up publishing presentations on YouTube? Why not just watch there for free, what's the difference?
Well, first of all, we open access to the recordings to everyone after a noticeable period of time. So those who miss the conference next week will not be able to see her reports soon. But that's not even the main thing.
Perhaps, it is more important that after each report we do not just have one or two questions from the participants for show, but a full-fledged “discussion zone” in the format of a video call: there you can question the speaker properly. This way, even an online conference turns out to be not just a set of long video monologues, but a meeting point for the professional community.
So we are waiting for everyone who is close to this online on March 12th. All details and tickets – Online.
