Architecture, Organization, Processes – and Humans

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Architecture, Organization, Processes   – and Humans Stefan Tilkov, stefan.tilkov@innoq.com @stilkov Software Architecture Summit Munich, 12 March 2018

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Observations Antipatterns Patterns Recommendations

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Conway’s Law: Organization → Architecture “Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”  – M.E. Conway

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Conway’s Law Illustrated

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Conway Reversal 1: Organization ← Architecture Any particular architecture approach constraints organizational options – i.e. makes some organizational models simple and others hard to implement.

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Choosing a particular architecture can be a means of optimizing for a desired organizational structure. Conway Reversal 2: Organization ← Architecture

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The “Tilkov wants a law, too” slide The quality of a system’s architecture  is inversely proportional to the number of bottlenecks limiting its evolution, development, and operations

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The “Tilkov wants a law, too” slide* In a digital company, architecture, organization & processes can only evolve together *Attempt #2 in case the 1st one doesn’t catch on

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Antipatterns

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Antipattern: Conference-driven Architecture

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Antipattern: Conference-driven Architecture Description Reasons Consequences Hypes are accepted as gospel, and applied to problems regardless of whether they match requirements or not • Hot and shiny toys! • Community respect • Search for guidance • Occasional successes • Motivated developers • Half-time of solutions matches conference cycle time • Acceptance of architecture directly related to # of conference visits

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Antipattern: Decoupling Illusion Stakeholder Stakeholder Stakeholder Platform Person

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Antipattern: Decoupling Illusion Description Reasons Consequences Technical separation into subsystems/services does not match business domain separation • Technical drivers prioritized over business drivers • Lack of awareness for stakeholder needs • Reuse driver furthers single platform approach • Microservices hype • Technical complexity • Conflicting stakeholder needs require coordination • Organizational bottlenecks due to centralized components with highly concurrent requests

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Antipattern: Domain-last Approach Biz Unit 1 Ops Stakeholder Stakeholder Stakeholder Biz Unit 2 Biz Unit 3 DB Tech 1 Tech 2 Dev

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Antipattern: Domain-last Approach Description Reasons Consequences Major driver for organizational structure is roles and technical capabilities, not business domain • Matches classical company structure • Division of labor in divisions, department, teams • Projects as exceptions to change something that works • Inter-departmental politics over business needs • Conflicting project and disciplinary hierarchies and stakeholders • Blameshifting

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Antipattern: Solution Centrism Stakeholder Stakeholder Stakeholder Solution

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Antipattern: Solution Centrism Description Reasons Consequences Implementation solution as unifying factor • Vendor influence • Experience drives selection of technology • Sunk cost fallacy • Inefficiency due to hammer/nail problem • Bottleneck by definition • Technology, not domain as unifying factor • Developer frustration • Skills shortage in market • Hard to motivate people to train in proprietary tech

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Antipattern: Uncreative Chaos

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Antipattern: Uncreative Chaos Description Reasons Consequences Lack of architectural structure & repeatable process for architectural decisions • No (effective) centralized governance • Non-technical senior management • Focus on unnecessary standardization • Strong business leaders, weak tech leaders • Redundancy in all aspects • Frequent technology discussions between teams • High integration costs and technical debt • Slow delivery capability due to complexity • Complex and expensive

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Antipattern: Authoritarian Regime

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Antipattern: Authoritarian Regime Description Reasons Consequences Centralized decision making, strong standardization, homogeneous environment • Unpopular decisions (cost savings, product standardization, …) • (Perceived or real) lack of skills in “lower levels” • Possibly due to company culture • Frustration and developer exodus • Lack of innovation & speed because of bottlenecks • Technology paralysis

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Patterns

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Pattern: Autonomous Cells Stakeholder Stakeholder Stakeholder Biz Dev Ops Biz Dev Ops Biz Dev Ops

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Pattern: Autonomous Cells Stakeholder Stakeholder Stakeholder Biz Dev Ops Biz Dev Ops Biz Dev Ops

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Pattern: Autonomous Cells Description Approach Consequences Decentralized, domain- focused cells with maximum authority over all aspects of a set of capabilities • Decisions are made locally on all aspects of a solution • Success is measured via customer-oriented KPIs • Cross-functional team with biz, dev, ops skills • Customer/end user focus • Decentralized delivery capability • Speed as #1 priority • “Full-stack” requirement for developers and other roles • Redundancy instead of centralization

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Pattern: Developer Self-Service

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Pattern: Developer Self-service Description Approach Consequences Project developers can access allocate resources without asking for permission • API-based access to resources (computation, storage, network, services) • Fine-grained security controls • Rate-limiting • Public, private or hybrid cloud-based • Shorter delivery/ deployment cycles • Support for experimentation • Easier test setup

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Pattern: Evolutionary Architecture

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Pattern: Evolutionary Architecture Description Approach Consequences Architecture is constructed so it can evolve as much as possible over the course of (ideally indefinite) time • Separation of large domain into “islands of change” • Design for replacement, not for re-use • Minimization of shared dependencies • Cell metaphor: Renewal over time • Experimentation with different micro architecture approaches possible

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Pattern: Regulated Market

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Pattern: Regulated Market Description Approach Consequences Let “the free market of ideas” decide what works best, but provide a framework of rules for interoperability • Separate micro & macro architecture • Strictly enforced rules for macro architecture • Loose, minimal governance for micro architecture • Motivated developers • Experimentation with different micro architecture approaches possible • Best-of-breed approach • Local optima

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Order Management Production Planning Billing Production Fulfillment Domain architecture

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Macro (technical) architecture

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JRuby C# Scala Groovy  Java Clojure

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RDBMS NoSQL K/V RDBMS RDBMS/DWH NoSQL  DocDB

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RDBMS NoSQL K/V RDBMS RDBMS/DWH NoSQL  DocDB Micro architecture

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Pattern: Marketing-based Governance

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Pattern: Marketing-based Governance Description Approach Consequences Architectural approaches are evangelized instead of mandated • Disseminate information via blogs, brown-bag sessions, public talks • Architects as communicators • Integration with public/community work • More heterogeneity • Similarity to industry • Decisions made based on a solution’s merit • Bottom-up modernization

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What Architects Do

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What architects want to do Shape strategy 30 % Make important decisions 30 % Mentor developers 20 % Explore technologies 20 %

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What others think architects do Slow down development 20 % Pick the wrong tools 20 % Refuse to learn from devs 20 % Define annoying rules 40 %

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What architects actually do Do technical stuff 5 % Act as salespeople 30 % Try to be involved 35 % Defend architecture 30 %

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Recommendations

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1. Acquire domain knowledge

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2. Partner with business stakeholders

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3. Create evolvable structures

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4. Get out of the way as quickly as possible

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Stefan Tilkov  stefan.tilkov@innoq.com  Phone: +49 170 471 2625 innoQ Deutschland GmbH Krischerstr. 100 40789 Monheim am Rhein Germany Phone: +49 2173 3366-0 innoQ Schweiz GmbH Gewerbestr. 11 CH-6330 Cham Switzerland Phone: +41 41 743 0116 www.innoq.com Ohlauer Straße 43 10999 Berlin Germany Phone: +49 2173 3366-0 Ludwigstr. 180E 63067 Offenbach Germany Phone: +49 2173 3366-0 Kreuzstraße 16  80331 München Germany Phone: +49 2173 3366-0 @stilkov That’s all I have.  Thanks for listening! Questions?

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www.innoq.com About INNOQ • Offices in Monheim (near Cologne), Berlin, Offenbach, Munich, Zurich • ~125 employees • Core competencies: software architecture consulting and software development • Privately owned, vendor-independent • Clients in finance, telecommunications, logistics, e-commerce; Fortune 500, SMBs, startups

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