Dodging Silver Bullets, Emergence in Distributed Architectures

This talk analyzes the conditions that lead us to adopt complex distributed software architectures like microservices. Extending Conway’s law, we observe that software is a reflection of a technical, social and even economic context and can be well understood as an emergent process. Attendees will learn the virtues and vices of domain partitioning architectures and enough context to apply them coherently.

Transcript

1. Emergence in Distributed Architectures — Sean Braithwaite @brapse · Code Europe 2017 Dodging Silver Bullets:
2. Emergence in Distributed Architectures — Sean Braithwaite @brapse · Code Europe 2017 Dodging Silver Bullets:
3. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Who are you?
4. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Why are we listening to you?
5. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Why are we listening to you?
6. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Agenda: • Architectures that Partition Domains • Politics & Economy of Software Architecture • Emergent Tensions • Domain Entropy • Evolving in Parallel
7. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Distributed Architecture Patterns.
8. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Distributed Architecture Patterns: Microservices Data Pipelines Smart Contracts
9. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Evaluating multiple dimensions.
10. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Distributed architectures require Infrastructure.
11. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Architectural decisions shape Economies.
12. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Architecture is Political.
13. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Risk: Using technology we don’t understand.
14. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Risk: Investing in False Economies.
15. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Risk: Inflaming organisational tensions.
16. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Distributed architectures are not Silver Bullets.
17. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets We need to understand not only How but more specifically Why and When
18. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets “Why” questions integrate perspectives
19. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets “When” questions predict outcomes
20. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Lobster Intermission.
21. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets 2012→2015
22. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets All Things Centralised: • App Team with same reporting line • Monolithic Rails in a single repository • Single Domain & Consistent language
23. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Driving Change: • New users & new uses • Platform Proliferation • Hyper Growth
24. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Emergent Tensions: • App Team developed cliques • Pull requests Battle Royal • Domain objects adopted multiple meanings
25. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets When everything hurts, it’s hard to know why.
26. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Domain Entropy.
27. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Social Entropy: Social entropy implies the tendency of social networks and society in general to break down over time, moving from cooperation and advancement towards conflict and chaos.
28. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Domain Entropy: Domain entropy implies the tendency for domains to break down over time, moving from coherent towards conflict and chaos.
29. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets ex: Internet platforms tend to grow to the point in which spam becomes a real problem. As the problem grows, spam becomes it’s own Domain.
30. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets New domains require integrity.
31. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Distributed architectures enable Parallel Evolution.
32. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Invest in distribution when parallel evolution is the imperative.
33. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Summary: • Architectures that partition domains • Emergent tensions • Domain Entropy • Evolving in parallel
34. @brapse Dodging Silver Bullets Takeaway: Distributed architectures resolve emerging tensions in collaboration between domains evolving in parallel.
35. Emergence in Distributed Architectures — Sean Braithwaite @brapse · Code Europe 2017 Dodging Silver Bullets: