(or Considerations, Conversations, Concerns, Collaborations, Core, …)
Design choices can expand or handcuff your organization’s options. Questions to be asking. ( or Grow Your Options or Develop options not handcuffs or Dynamic systems for dynamic times. or Dynamic times require dynamic systems or Bridging concerns of leaders and engineers. )
Introduction
Since at least 2001, software developers have tried harder to work in a way that helps our organizations change direction with a relatively low cost. The world was changing fast in 2001, we knew predict and control models were limited in that context. The world is changing even faster now. While we’ve lowered the cost of change on the detail level, many organization-level design choices have left organization and their leaders with fewer options, fewer capabilities, and the feeling of limited control and limited ability to adapt. For leaders to assume that “agility” is an engineering-only concern, or for engineers to assume that leaders are not interested in the implication of architectural design choices has not been working very well. Let’s start bridging the gap by exploring shared concerns and questions. Leaders and builders/engineers can work work together to build dynamic organizations for these dynamic times. Let’s explore some of the choices and trade offs. Let’s at least start asking more questions about our shared concerns.
Organizational Design Choices to Explore. (discuss, scrutinize) Let’s look at some choices and tradeoffs, and questions to be asking. People - Kind or skilled or both Insource or outsource Colocated or distributed Cloud services or your own servers Being tool Builders or tool users Vendors, suppliers, ... Contractors, advisers Central decisions or distributed decisions Experimenting & Exploring or Prediction and Risk Aversion. Claiming your dependents and managing your dependencies. Few Tech languages & technologies or lots Shared language, tools, and lunch Safety or Fear Culture Automation or manual TBD Acceptable Debt vs tech debt Good on the Whole Questions to Consider (or Questions to be Asking) Sustainable? Transferable? Expands options or restricts options? Dependencies Increased or decreased TBD Case Studies TBD e.g. effected by choices of AWS, Vendors, etc….