Strategic Tech

JULY 29, 2021

If you would like to learn or practice how to break up a large business into domains and use them as the foundation for your software architecture and team organization, I have created a strategic domain-driven design kata that you may find useful. Who to invite? I recommend organising attendees into groups of 4–5 people.

Design 52

Design Software Architecture Architecture Strategy 52

Strategic Tech

MARCH 16, 2021

There are a few qualities that differentiate average from high performing software engineering organisations. I believe that attitude towards the design of code and architecture is one of them. Both valuing design and striving for continuous delivery are necessary. So we need to make it part of everything we do.

Software Engineering 80

Software Engineering Design Engineering Software 80

Strategic Tech

MAY 24, 2019

Over the past few years I have focused much of my learning and work choices around learning about the design of sociotechnical systems?—?how how to design software architectures and organise teams around them. As part of good design, we should consider the effects of changing all of these variables.

Design 45

Design Software Architecture Strategy Technology 45

Strategic Tech

JANUARY 9, 2024

Problem, Strategy, and Solution Spaces To gain clarity on the terminology, it’s helpful to describe the various activities involved in building a product, which can then be grouped into buckets like problem and solution space or something else.

Development 98

Development Strategy Software Software 98

Strategic Tech

JULY 22, 2019

In Domain-Driven Design, a large system is decomposed into bounded contexts , which become natural boundaries in code as microservices and as teams in the organisation. The Bounded Context Design Canvas I designed this canvas based on the typical flow of strategic DDD workshops I run publicly and privately.

Design 76

Design Systems Strategy Processing 76

Strategic Tech

SEPTEMBER 18, 2021

Another hurdle to decision making is when technology leaders feel that the skills needed to deliver big changes don’t exist within the organization like the lack of DDD, architecture, or cloud skills. Choosing where to focus is a balancing act: delivering new products, fixing legacy software, and improving engineering culture.

Strategy 97

Strategy Design Technology Technology 97

Strategic Tech

JANUARY 22, 2024

Architecture modernization initiatives are strategic efforts involving many teams, usually for many months or years. An AMET is an architecture Enabling Team that helps to coordinate and upskill all teams and stakeholders involved in a modernization initiative. They need a more loosely coupled architecture and empowered teams.

Architecture 98

Architecture Metrics Logistics Strategy 98

The Netflix TechBlog

MARCH 10, 2020

Leveraging Hexagonal Architecture We needed to support the ability to swap data sources without impacting business logic , so we knew we needed to keep them decoupled. We decided to build our app based on principles behind Hexagonal Architecture and Uncle Bob’s Clean Architecture.

Architecture 345

Architecture Transportation Java Strategy 345

Strategic Tech

FEBRUARY 19, 2020

I remember as a young, naive software developer, I assumed there would be structured processes and patterns similar to those used for designing a software architecture. I crave structure and analytical thinking patterns to design optimal solutions. There are too many variables involved.

Architecture 64

Architecture Strategy Design Software Architecture 64

Strategic Tech

JULY 18, 2018

There are thousands of ways we can shape the software systems we build and organise our teams around them. Yet there is no flowchart we can simply follow to find the optimal design. The products themselves are software systems which grow harder and harder to reason about as they scale and age.

Design 40

Design Architecture Software Architecture Systems 40

Strategic Tech

JUNE 18, 2021

Field is most often used to designate a domain of professional specialization. Industry , which designates a domain of commercial endeavour Firstly, there are types of domain which add constraints on how items are grouped. We can learn a few things from these examples. What is a Domain?

Software Architecture 64

Software Architecture Architecture Strategy Technology 64

Strategic Tech

AUGUST 26, 2018

A trip to the supermarket can teach you a lot about designing software systems and shaping teams to build them… I was recently in need of some chocolate sauce. The Chocolate Sauce Heuristic for Software Design There are a few lessons about software development we can learn from this story, but I want to focus on design.

Design 40

Design Software Architecture Architecture Software 40

O'Reilly Software

JANUARY 29, 2020

Get a comprehensive overview and hands-on training on software architecture's many aspects. There is no single—or clearly defined—path to becoming a software architect. The sessions at the O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference reflect this fact. Fundamentals of software architecture (Mark Richards).

Software Architecture 12

Software Architecture Architecture Software Software 12

Strategic Tech

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

While MVPs have been mainstream for a long time, the concept of Value Streams and Value Stream Architecture is still in the early adopter phase in the DevOps world. or “How do software architecture, domains, Conway’s Law, Team Topologies, and value streams all fit together?”. They’re all pieces in the same puzzle.

Software Architecture 98

Software Architecture Architecture DevOps Software 98

Strategic Tech

NOVEMBER 24, 2020

Domain-Driven Design is an approach to designing systems, usually software, that emphasises creating a common language between domain experts and system builders. This is normal, embrace the fuzziness and apply design thinking. The elements in Simon Wardley’s Strategy cycle are much more usable in my opinion.

Design 98

Design Strategy Systems Architecture 98

Strategic Tech

APRIL 11, 2021

The microservices era has been good for software architecture. A domain service builds on the basic definition of a microservice: it’s a loosely-coupled, independently deployable element of software architecture which is owned by a single team. Domains are part of the logical architecture of a business.

Software Architecture 52

Software Architecture Architecture Design Games 52

Strategic Tech

MAY 9, 2020

If you want to get started with Strategic DDD to gain deeper insights into your domain and to align your software architecture with your domain, you can use this Miro board: [link] No sign up, installation, or payment is required to view the board. In order to use the tools you will need to copy them onto a board of your own.

Software Architecture 59

Software Architecture Architecture Design Technology 59

Smashing Magazine

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

It’s one thing to identify bottlenecks and implement optimizations for a specific website or a few similar websites, and quite another when dealing with many millions of websites, having such a wide variety of functionality, and an almost total freedom of design. Instead, we have to accommodate all of this variability, mostly on-demand.

Website 126

Website Performance Google Media 126

Strategic Tech

JANUARY 24, 2021

Architecture Ownership Patterns for Team Topologies. Part 3: Multi-Team Patterns was originally published in Technology Strategy Ideas and Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Architecture 98

Architecture Mobile Infrastructure Cloud 98

O'Reilly

MAY 19, 2020

A strict definition of “cloud” must also include software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings of all kinds—including email (Google G Suite email; Microsoft Exchange Online), office productivity suites (Google Docs and Sheets; Microsoft Office 365), and similar offerings. Amazon and AWS Ascendant.

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Cloud Serverless AWS Architecture 141

Strategic Tech

MAY 24, 2022

At NDC Porto 2022, I teamed up with Maxime Sanglan-Charlier to run our 2 hour software architecture-themed workshop. How we prepared the room at NDC Porto just before the workshop started The workshop involves reviewing pre-made canvases and identifying design problems and suggesting improvements. albeit a few annoyances, too.

Virtualization 52

Virtualization Software Architecture Architecture Games 52

Strategic Tech

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

Is there any way it’s possible to predict the future so that our architecture can easily absorb the changes we need to make of it? One thing I want you to notice is that good architecture is about more than just defining good boundaries. In DDD a bounded context is an independent, loosely-coupled architectural component.

Architecture 98

Architecture Government Design Availability 98

Tasktop

OCTOBER 30, 2019

Scott Havens, Senior Director of Engineering at Mode Operandi, highlighted the benefits of event-based systems over legacy approaches, and how software architecture should be just as beautiful as the clothes on sale. Just look at how ugly that service-oriented architecture is!” He had a strategy. He laid out a mission.

DevOps 8

DevOps Education Innovation Metrics 8

Strategic Tech

MAY 3, 2021

Mapping out your business’s domain landscape has many benefits: knowledge sharing, generating product ideas, providing the foundation for software architecture, aligning on requirements, but a common challenge is… “where do we start?” The high-level structure is not design structure (e.g. Q: What is a domain landscape?

Software Architecture 52

Software Architecture Architecture Design Software 52

Strategic Tech

APRIL 27, 2019

Layers start to emerge and as a result, shipping new customer-facing features require changes that cut through multiple layers of the architecture. Being aware of the patterns inherent to layered sociotechnical architectures can save you a lot of pain and politics in the long-term. As a consequence, we also have subservient teams?—?teams

Software Architecture 58

Software Architecture Architecture Government Design 58

Strategic Tech

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Many of the practices that enable teams to move quickly are the same practices that enable highly-reliabile systems: automation, observability, testing, and design. Rethinking Domain, Software, and Team Boundaries As organizations grow, the structures and practices that helped them to be effective at one scale hinder them at another scale.

Innovation 52

Innovation Speed Google Strategy 52

Strategic Tech

JUNE 4, 2019

One of the key decisions we need to make in software architecture and in our organisations is when and where to create shared services and organise teams to build them. But there are a series of heuristics, or questions we can ask ourselves, to improve our chances of making the right sociotechnical design decision.

Software Architecture 40

Software Architecture Efficiency Innovation Architecture 40

Strategic Tech

JULY 20, 2021

Reading Strategy Patterns One of the techniques I use frequently for visualising business, product, and technology strategy is Core Domain Charts. Maybe they weren’t invited for political reasons…. This technique plots the business differentiation and domain complexity of a business’s domains.

Strategy 52

Strategy Innovation Technology Technology 52

Strategic Tech

JUNE 23, 2018

Loosely-coupled teams enabled by loosely-coupled software architecture is one of the strongest predictors of continuous delivery performance and organizational scaling. Decoupling Streams of Work Our goal when designing systems is to maximise the speed of delivery and value of the work we deliver.

Systems 40

Systems Social Media Design Media 40

Strategic Tech

DECEMBER 2, 2018

I’ll show you some example scenarios to help you understand this concept, and I’ll demonstrate sociotechnical architecture patterns you can apply in your organisation to optimise your alignment efficiency. To address this challenge, I’d like to introduce you to the concept of Alignment Efficiency.

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Efficiency Speed Innovation Transportation 40

Strategic Tech

AUGUST 1, 2019

You’re building a new system and two members of your team propose alternative architectures for sending notifications. How will you design the most effective architecture which supports short-term goals and long-term evolution? Which one is correct? How would you architect the solution?

Architecture 40

Architecture Design Engineering Best Practices 40

Strategic Tech

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

When your software system communicates with external systems or devices, there is good reason to isolate all communication with the external system into a single place and perform the relevant translation there. I call this pattern The Gateway Interchange Context. The GIC is also risky in that business rules could start to creep in.

Architecture 40

Architecture Monitoring Software Software 40

Strategic Tech

DECEMBER 12, 2019

Evolving Your Aggregates Over Time The initial criteria on which you base your aggregate design is likely to change over time. If you’d like to go through the whole process of modelling domains, shaping the software architecture, and finding aggregates, join my 2 day workshop at DDD EU in February 2020. Hope to see you there.

Healthcare 10

Healthcare Software Architecture Database Software 10