The Changing Face of Architectural Practice

Software is changing, teams are changing, the world is changing.

But the practice of architecture simply isn’t keeping up; and right at the time when we need more architecture not less.

The traditional approaches we keep trying to apply are in direct opposition to the new physics of constantly changing, sociotechnical systems. The old norms are being overturned in front of us. What used to be expensive is now cheap, what was slow is now fast, what used to be a sensible default is now a massive mistake.

This track will take the practice of architecture out of its echo chamber. The speakers will share their experiences, wisdom, and insights straight from this new world. There will be multiple perspectives and no guarantees. No-one will tell you to copy what they did, but you will learn about how they thought, what they did, how they thought about that thinking, and most importantly what they learned.

Join us to have your mind opened, and the joy returned to the practice of software architecture.


From this track

Session

Holistic Engineering: Organic Problem Solving for Complex Evolving Systems

Every day developers have to work with code influenced by past decisions made by non-technical departments. Every day there are defects and other obstacles caused by non-technical factors that are nonetheless reflected in your code.

Speaker image - Vanessa Formicola

Vanessa Formicola

Principal Engineer @FloHealth, Ex Thoughtworks & Microsoft, Community Builder and Social Change Advocate

Track Host

Andrew Harmel-Law

Technical Principal @Thoughtworks, Author of Facilitating Software Architecture, Trainer for O'Reilly, Consultant, and DDD (Over) Enthusiast

Andrew is a Tech Principal at Thoughtworks, specializing in Java / JVM technologies, agile delivery, build tools and automation, and domain driven design. They have experience across the software development lifecycle and in many sectors.

Andrew is also an author and trainer for O’Reilly. They've written one book about facilitating software architecture and one chapter about implementing the Accelerate/DORA four key metrics. They also run regular online training sessions in Domain-Drive Design (First Steps) and Architecture Decision Making by Example.

What motivates Andrew is the humane delivery and sustainable evolution of large-scale software solutions, that fulfill complex user needs. They understand that people, architecture, process and tooling all have key roles to play in achieving this.

Andrew has a great passion for open source software and its communities. They have been involved with OSS to a greater or lesser extent since their career began; as a user, contributor, expert group member, or paid advocate - most notably as one of the Jenkins JobDSL originators.

Andrew enjoys sharing their experience as much as possible. This sharing is not only seen in their formal consulting engagements, but also informally through mentoring, blog posts, conferences (speaking and organising), and open-sourcing their code.

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