Facilitating Software Architecture

Chapter 15. The Transition of Power and Accountability

The architecture advice process sets in motion a series of personal and collective social challenges. Part IV, starting with this chapter, will help you understand those challenges. It will look more broadly at the sociotechnical system you’ve set in motion and help you avoid building yet another factory, just like the one you are trying to tear down.

In this chapter, I’ll give attention to the “social” aspects, specifically the shift in power and accountability from a named group to the entire collective. I’ll discuss the key obstacles and forces you will collectively encounter as you transition from a traditional to a decentralized, inclusive practice of software architecture. By being aware of these obstacles, you can ensure things don’t become either “antisocial” or “decentralization theater.” If you’re putting in all this effort to ensure that anyone can decide only to find that it’s the “same old people”¹ making the same decisions in the same way—just like it always was—then it might feel like a gargantuan waste of effort. It’s also a shame because not only will you fail to obtain the efficiency gains, but more important, you will also miss out on the many benefits that a more diverse, trusted, and self-managing collective of deciders has to offer.

Power Transitions Are Never Straightforward

Challenging established, traditional hierarchical power dynamics is a tricky thing to do. It requires individuals to break out ...