Michael Nygard on architecture without an end state - a podcast by OReilly Media

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Embracing late changes, plurality, and decentralization.

In this episode of theO’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk withMichael Nygard, a software architect atCognitect. He has spoken about “architecture without an end state” at numerous O’Reilly Software Architecture events, and he is the author of the bookRelease It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software.

Discussion points:

• Architecture without an end state means accepting that “changes you’re starting now will co-exist with changes that started last year and the year before,” Nygard says. “If you adopt that perspective, then you stop trying to rip up the pavement and do something completely new, and you focus a lot more on incremental change.”
• QuotingMary Poppendieck, Nygard says that changes in scope should be embraced as an opportunity. “It’s not only reality that we’re going to have technical disruptions to our systems; we’re going to have business disruptions as well,” he says.
• “Embracing plurality” is one of Nygard’s eight rules for architecting systems that are built to accept change. “When you build a service, it should allow for many consumers, some of whom you have no prior knowledge about— they just show up and start using your system,” he says.

Other links:

• Nygard’s presentationManeuverable Architecturefrom the 2016 O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference
• Nygard’s 2016blog poston the “twilight period” in software development and deployment for cloud native systems
• Nygard’s workshop at QCon San Franciscoon November 16th
• The bookThe Principles of Product Development Flowby Donald Reinertsen

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