Architect(ure) as Enabler of Organization’s Sustainable Flow of Change

Architecture is an unavoidable element of any tech-enabled organization. As Grady Booch says: "every software-intensive system has an architecture. In some cases that architecture is intentional, while in others it is accidental. Most of the times it is both". Furthermore, organizations are complex sociotechnical systems: teams ("Who) that listen and respond to "What" their environment and customers need by building tech-enabled products ("How")). These elements are continuously changing, so we must evolve and adapt how we approach architecture in our teams and across the organization. This is particularly important in modern product organizations that want to support a sustainable "fast flow of change" to respond continuously to their customers and environment.

In this talk, I motivate the need to embrace this evolutionary approach to architecture, i.e., continuously evolve its "architecture topology" (https://esilva.net/tla_insights/architecture-topologies). To provide a robust formulation, I describe the organization as a network of related scopes (e.g., Teams, Products, Product Groups, Portfolios, etc.). These scopes scale the organization and its ability to evolve sustainably. Architecture happens in all these scopes and across them.

During the talk, I explore multiple architecture topologies and elements that evolve and mature them, for example: how to position architects and/or people doing architecture, how it enables decision-making, how it supports learning & flow of change, etc. I also discuss challenges typically found in each architecture topology (which tend to be the bottlenecks we must address by evolving to another topology). Then, I share strategies we can use to evolve the architecture topology. For example, team topologies, developing a culture of trust, architecture as enabling team, coaching & support architects transitioning, advice process, etc. Per architecture topology, I also share first-hand real-world examples, particularly ones I have seen over the last five years working as Principal Tech Lead at bol.com (an organization that went through hyper-growth and required several evolutions of its architecture topology).

I end this talk by emphasizing the need to embrace the continuous evolution of our organizations, as their environments are also continuously changing. As such, our approaches and practices to architecture must also evolve. For this to happen, we must strive to shape structures that allow this evolution, namely a culture of trust and safety and one that embraces that the organization is an open system.

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Transcript

1. Architect(ure) as Enabler of Organization’s Sustainable Flow of Change Eduardo da Silva, PhD (esilva.net | @emgsilva | eduardo@esilva.net) Kandddinsky 2022, 31/10/2022
3. 3 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change
4. 4 Cope with this by stretching social systems => which leads to messy social and technical systems… Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change
5. 5 Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash Leading to continuous “fight” against the environment (external & internal)
6. 🏢 These old org structures don’t cut it anymore…they limit the dynamics & velocity that modern orgs need for people to do their best (Knowledge) work 6 Photo by Cole Patrick on Unsplash
7. ◌ Acknowledge that orgs are “Open System” - continuously affected by their environment, and affecting it back 7 Photo by Ronaldo de Oliveira on Unsplash
8. 8 💡Creating structure that allow org to respond to changes in the environment, and to learn & adapt as needed! (sustainable flow of change) Photo by Ronaldo de Oliveira on Unsplash
9. SocioTechnical Systems Design & Evolution - Model 9 Sociotechnical Systems Evolution & Architecture, Eduardo da Silva
11. “every software-intensive system has an architecture. In some cases that architecture is intentional, while in others it is accidental. Most of the times it is both” –Grady Booch 11 [sociotechnical]
12. TL;DR: Approaches to architecture in teams. There are different forms & they change in time. 12 Architecture Topologies & Architecture as Enabling Team, Eduardo da Silva
13. A model for organizing architects & Architecture* Model to approach Architecture in teams. Originally introduced in Stefan Toth’s book on software architecture 13 *Would you like architects with your architecture? | images credits: Gregor Hohpe
14. Evolution Pattern: Shift Right 14 • Typical progression in most orgs (need time to evolve) • Progression depends on “architectural & team/org maturity”
15. Evolution Pattern: Bounce Back 15 • May happen if teams have issues approaching architecture • Focus should be: create conditions to get back to model #2
16. 16 Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash ❓What about Architecture & Decisions across teams and the organization?
17. 17 Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash ⚠ org is a network of teams and scopes. Looking at “team scope” architecture in isolation is not enough!
18. 18 Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash ⚙ common Reductionist Approach: Overfocus on just “Team Autonomy”… forgetting teams exist in a network that form the organization
19. 19 Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash 💡 Alternative framing: embrace org as a complex adaptive system, which is defined by all its teams and their interactions ➡ “Purposeful Autonomy”
20. “A system is more than the sum of its parts… It loses its essential properties when it is taken apart…“ Russell Ackoff 20 On Systems Thinking, Russell Ackoff
21. 21 Scopes of Architecture & Leadership across the Org credits: Technical Leadership, Ruth Malan
22. How can we model those different scopes in an organization? 22
23. Example: Product-centric Organization • Team scope is just one scope, a sub-system in a Product scope • Product Group scope tends to be a way to scale related product (scopes) 23 Product Taxonomy, Ross Clanton, Amy Walters, Jason Zubrick, Pat Birkeland, Mik Kersten, Alan Nance, and Anders Wallgren
24. 24 Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash 🎯 enable architecture across all the organizations “Scopes” so that the overall system (org and its products) can best achieve its purpose & goals
27. 27 • Focus on “product” scope & its sub-scopes (teams) • These ideas can be similarly applied to other scopes (to scale, align purpose & decision making in the whole org)
28. 0: No Architect(ure) (❌“Implicit” Architecture) 28 Photo by Martijn Baudoin on Unsplash
31. Architect Elevator “In addition to making technical decisions, architects can help change the organization's structure and processes to support this transition.” Connect-dots: “...architects need to take the express elevator from the engine room to the penthouse, where business strategy resides.” 31
32. 1: Scope Architect & Team Scope Boundaries (❗“Architect decides, team executes”) 32 Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash
35. 2: Scope Enabling Architect & Teams Architects (✅“Architect in surrounding scope”+“Architect in team”) 35 Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash
39. 39 The Advice Process https://martinfowler.com/articles/scaling-architecture-conversationally.html
40. 40 Scaling the Practice of Architecture, Conversationally, Andrew Harmel-Law 40
41. 41 41 Scaling the Practice of Architecture, Conversationally, Andrew Harmel-Law
42. 42 42 Scaling the Practice of Architecture, Conversationally, Andrew Harmel-Law
43. 43 43 Scaling the Practice of Architecture, Conversationally, Andrew Harmel-Law
44. 44 44 Inspired on: Reinventing Organizations book, by Frederic Laloux Scaling the Practice of Architecture, Conversationally, Andrew Harmel-Law
45. 45 45 Scaling the Practice of Architecture, Conversationally, Andrew Harmel-Law
46. 46 “What worries you about the Advice Process?” Credits: DDD EU 2022 Keynote, Andrew Harmel-Law, Diana Montalion, Mike Rozinsky, Gayathri Thiyagarajan and Dan Young
47. 47 “How confident are you in the advice process?” Credits: DDD EU 2022 Keynote, Andrew Harmel-Law, Diana Montalion, Mike Rozinsky, Gayathri Thiyagarajan and Dan Young
48. 48 “An idea to make us more confident in this process” Credits: DDD EU 2022 Keynote, Andrew Harmel-Law, Diana Montalion, Mike Rozinsky, Gayathri Thiyagarajan and Dan Young
49. 3: Anybody Architecture (✅✅Architecture without (almost no) Architects) 49 Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash
52. Thank you! Eduardo da Silva, PhD Independent consultant on enabling sociotech leadership & systems evolution # @emgsilva | esilva.net | eduardo@esilva.net 󰗔 Architecture Topologies: github.com/emgsilva/architecture-topologies 💡 “companion article” of this talk coming soon on esilva.net 52
53. 📚 References • Architecture Topologies & Architecture as Enabling Team, Eduardo da Silva • Would you like architects with your architecture?, Gregor Hohpe • Less is More with Minimalist Architecture, Ruth Malan and Dana Bredemeyer • Team Topologies, Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais • Sociotechnical Systems Evolution & Architecture, Eduardo da Silva • On Systems Thinking, Russell Ackoff (analysis by Eduardo da Silva) • Scaling the Practice of Architecture, Conversationally, Andrew Harmel-Law • Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux • Advice Process Playbook, Equal Experts Consulting • Accelerate, Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim 53