Facilitating Software Architecture • Andrew Harmel-Law & Sonya Natanzon

12 snips

May 2, 2025

Andrew Harmel-Law, a Technical Principal at Thoughtworks and author, teams up with Sonya Natanzon, Senior Director of Software Engineering at Guardant Health. They dive into fostering decentralized sociotechnical systems and highlight the importance of embracing imperfections in decision-making. The conversation explores psychological safety as essential for innovation and emphasizes adaptability and small iterations. They discuss the balance between creativity and structure in building resilient systems that thrive amid complexity, ensuring accountability and collective ownership.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

Architect-PM Pairing Unveils Truth

Andrew Harmel-Law shared how pairing with a product manager challenged his architectural assumptions significantly.
This collaboration helped him realize fast and iterative decision-making is often more effective than seeking a perfect answer.

ADVICE

Enable Decentralized Decision-Making

Foster trust and psychological safety to empower decentralized decision-making.
Encourage anyone willing to participate and create space for leadership at all levels.

ADVICE

Start Small for Architecture Decisions

Start small when introducing decentralized architecture decision-making to understand your organization's culture.
Use the advice process and architectural decision records (ADRs) to build trust and transparency incrementally.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Shoshana Zuboff

In this book, Shoshana Zuboff provides a comprehensive analysis of surveillance capitalism, a new economic order where corporations accumulate vast wealth and power by predicting and controlling human behavior. Zuboff details how this form of capitalism, originating in Silicon Valley, has spread into every economic sector, creating 'behavioral futures markets' where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold. She argues that this system, free from democratic oversight, poses significant threats to democracy, freedom, and human future, and urges readers to take action to protect their autonomy in the digital world.

Learning Systems Thinking

Diana Montalion

Team Topologies

Matthew Skelton

Manuel Pais

Ruth Malan

Team Topologies provides a step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction. The book focuses on four primary team types (stream-aligned, enabling, complicated subsystem, and platform teams) and three interaction modes (collaboration, X-as-a-service, and facilitating). It emphasizes the importance of managing cognitive load, clear boundaries, and effective communication pathways to optimize value streams and software health. The authors draw on their experience and include real-world case studies to help readers choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization.

The Principles of Product Development Flow

Second Generation Lean Product Development

Don Reinertsen

This book challenges the conventional wisdom in product development by highlighting the flaws in current practices, such as maximizing capacity utilization and eliminating variability. It introduces a new approach based on solid economics and real science, focusing on controlling invisible and unmanaged queues that undermine product development performance. The book provides 175 underlying principles organized into eight major areas, including improving economic decisions, managing queues, reducing batch size, applying WIP constraints, accelerating feedback, managing flows in the presence of variability, and decentralizing control. It draws on insights from lean manufacturing, telecommunications, and computer operating systems to create flow in product development processes, leading to significant improvements even in mature processes.

Powerful

Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

Patty McCord

In 'Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility,' Patty McCord challenges traditional HR practices and advocates for a culture based on freedom and responsibility. Drawing from her experience as the Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, McCord argues against conventional HR methods such as annual performance reviews and retention plans, instead promoting radical honesty, constant communication, and motivating employees through challenging work. The book provides practical advice on creating a high-performance work environment and emphasizes the importance of transparency, trust, and continuous adaptation to business needs.

Facilitating Software Architecture

Andrew Harmel-Law

A pattern language

Towns, Buildings, Construction

Nax Jacobsohn

Murray Silverstein

Ingrid Fiksdahl-King

Shlomo Angel

Max Jacobson

Sara Ishikawa

Christopher Alexander

This book, written by Christopher Alexander and his colleagues, introduces the concept of a 'pattern language' consisting of 253 patterns that address various design problems in architecture, urban planning, and community design. Each pattern describes a recurring problem and its solution, allowing readers to adapt these solutions to their specific needs and local conditions. The book is structured to help ordinary people, as well as professionals, design and improve their homes, streets, and communities. It has had significant influence on fields beyond architecture, including software engineering and urban planning[3][4][5].