Building Evolutionary Architectures: Support Constant Change

by Neal Ford

From a practical governance standpoint in large organizations, we find the Goldilocks Governance model works well: pick three technology stacks for standardization—simple, intermediate, and complex—and allow individual service requirements to drive stack requirements. This gives teams the flexibility to choose a suitable technology stack while still providing the company some benefits of standards.

Cycle time is therefore a critical metric in evolutionary architecture projects—faster cycle time implies a faster ability to evolve.

In software, this is seen in the form of the irrational artifact attachment—the more time and effort you invest in planning or a document, the more likely you will protect what’s contained in the plan or document even in the face of evidence that it is inaccurate or outdated.

Organizing teams around domains implicitly means organizing them around business capabilities.

Demonstration defeats discussion.