Side Project – Software Architecture Process Manager

I have started reading The Process of Software Architecting by Peter Eeles and Peter Cripps.   So far this is has been a great read.  It is nice to see a book focus on the process in a concise manner.  In each chapter there are great  process diagrams and the chapters are broken down by steps.  Each step shows the stakeholders involved, the input artifacts and the output artifacts.  The authors do a good job stressing that not all steps/artifacts/stakeholder are required in all steps but they lay them all out.

I find that I learn by doing, so I am going to start a project where I  build a process manager.  Are there products out there that will the same thing that I am attempting, sure but  I am not building this to change the world.  My goals are to reinforce the point brought out in the book, exercise some of the steps, and utilize technologies new to me to build the manager.

More details will follow but I can see the following features:

• Modify/Create new template
• Allow the ability to upload and manage content
• The ability to track progress through the process
• Maybe some reporting tools

Some of the technologies I am thinking about include:

• WPF
• LINQ-to-XML

I know you should not choose technologies until you are further along the process but these are ones I am interested in.  I will report on the progress throughout the project and see where we go.