Flow Architectures

Chapter 2. The Business Case for Flow

We are going to spend much of this book exploring how technology will—and what technologies are needed to—enable flow. However, it is important to first establish why flow is desirable—even important—to businesses and other institutions. Change is expensive, so the benefits of flow-friendly architectures must clearly incent businesses to adopt the technologies and architectural patterns involved. Otherwise, flow is simply a solution looking for a problem.

In order to tell this story, we will explore some of the ways flow will enable these benefits. The cost of integration, composability of solutions, and utility of the WWF are all factors that will have a significant impact on business outcomes. So, it is important to explore those factors, as well as some of the outcomes they will enable.

I might have chosen to do this in reverse: tell the technology story, then work to define why businesses would value that technology. However, this is not the way technology evolution generally works. Technologies that succeed generally find an immediate pain point—a need that creates a sense of urgency to find a solution. Users may have been unaware that a problem was painful until an acceptable solution exposes it, but it’s always there in some form.

Businesses can worry about cost, revenue opportunities, competitive pressures, investor pressures, regulatory requirements, and so on. Nonprofits might worry about funding, effectiveness, and shifting priorities. ...