Facilitating Software Architecture

Part I. First Principles

The opening chapter of this book offered both a revolutionary explanation for why the traditional approaches to the practice of software architecture are feeling increasingly hard and a new approach to resolve it. The first part of this book will now describe a way to practice architecture in this postrevolutionary world.

Chapter 2 kicks us off by looking at the key aspect of how decisions affect how we practice architecture: specifically, the types of decisions, when they are significant enough to pay attention to, and when they aren’t.

The problem defined, Chapter 3 goes on to describe all of the traditional approaches for deciding at scale before evaluating them in light of our current need: decentralized deciding and fast feedback. None of the traditional options could support both of these, but the analysis clarifies the requirements for a decision process that could.

Chapter 4 then introduces the architecture advice process: an approach that optimizes for both decentralized deciding and fast feedback at scale.

But how might you make such a change, and what might the consequences of such a change be? Chapter 5 considers adoption of the advice process: what you need, where to start, challenges you will likely need to overcome, and confidence concerns that will likely arise.

Chapter 6 then proceeds to tackle these concerns, taking the already established concept of architectural decision records (ADRs) and showing how they are an essential tool for ...