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  "title": "Scaling the Practice of Architecture, Conversationally",
  "note": "Software architecture is a complicated topic, and one I've actually spent a lot of my career trying to push into teams and not have as a discrete function. However, you reach a point of scale where you need architecture, and in fact you need enterprise architects. Without them I can guarantee you will go slower. However, it is key that those architects determine how to engage with teams in a way that does not slow down delivery, and is empowering to creating great solutions.\n\n> Architecture need not be a monologue; delivered top-down from the minds and mouths of a centralised few. This article describes another way to do architecture; as a series of conversations, driven by a decentralised and empowering decision-making technique, and supported by four learning and alignment mechanisms: Decision Records, Advisory Forum, Team-sourced Principles, and a Technology Radar\n\nYes! That sounds like the way to do it. I like so much of this article and think it hits on many of the ways that I have seen architecture done right in a modern service team model. My only edit would be to remove the word \"anarchist\" from the article, as I think it is distracting and not the desired intent.\n\nTwo things that caught me in this. The first was this line.\n\n> Other times the sheer number of folks impacted makes the decide-ee think again. Is this thing which might make their life a little bit easier really worth the effort of consulting all those people? Or, can they split this large decision into multiple, smaller decisions? When decisions do proceed, they are frequently right-sized purely as a matter of expediency.\n\nHow interesting, and what a good way to frame up an issue. If you are attempting to make a change that requires you to engage a dozen teams, your change is likely too big! This sounds a lot like story points, if your story points are too big, you probably don't know what you are attempting to do. I think many would see the above as a sign of beuaracracy, but flipping the narrative on it is a much more appropriate view. \n\nI love this bit...\n\n> To me, it is this architecture, the one which is in the heads of those writing the code, that is the most important. In adopting this decentralised approach, where the practice of architectural decision-making is much more dispersed, this problem is in many ways, mitigated.\n\nI often refer to this as the **mental model** that is in your teams head. It is **incredibly** important that all of your service teams share a macro mental model of how their services are potentially being orchestrated. Teams don't need this in detail for anything beyond their specific services, but the general model, the map, must be known by all.\n\nThe tools recommended are compelling and simple.. \n\n> There are four of them:\n> \n> 1. a thinking and recording tool\n> 2. a time and place for conversations;\n> 3. a light to illuminate and guide towards a unified direction;\n> 4. a means to sense the current technical landscape and climate.\n\nPragmatic, light, decentralized. Great approach.",
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