Software And Systems Architecture, more or less
Profile pic: drawing of me (gifted to me); upside down, as if in a reflection, with cloudy sky and little architecture drawing character hanging from frame
| Web | https://www.ruthmalan.com |
| Classes | https://ti.to/bredemeyer/ |
More in the chapbook linked here (in case you want to spread it around, to help more folk understand the practice(s) of system design):
This gets a lot done:
The responsibility of architecture is the architecture of responsibility. (Tom Graves)
System design is contextual design — it is
inherently about boundaries (what’s in, what’s out, what spans, what moves between), and about tradeoffs. It reshapes what is outside, just as it shapes what is inside.
There are various troubling troubles with the “automation” of code production, but one is: the notion that this means that one person can perform the work of a team…
Systems take on responsibilities from their contexts. And that comes with responsibilities!
Also important to the notion of systems, is what makes it viable (and sustainable) in its context(s). So system design must also consider system fit to its contexts and purpose, and how it responds to the various forces arising from those contexts.
Anyway, long story short: system design (in tech) is where strategy, product design, and architecture **mutually influence**
A lot of “systems” focus (of definition and design, etc) goes to what makes the system a system from an internal perspective. Parts and relationships or interactions; boundaries.
What makes the system viable is partly how its internal structure and dynamics is managed and evolved to be the kind of system it is, with the capabilities and properties that necessitates, addressing internal challenges that arise.
System Design as *system* *design* puts emphasis where we need it: design as something we do, bringing intention and attention and expertise to (co-)shaping (and co-evolving) a *system*.
The kinds of systems we design (in tech), interact in ecologies of systems, fulfilling a purpose and creating and consuming (let’s call it) value, and addressing the challenges that arise in being that kind of system, fulfilling a purpose and engaged in the interactions that keep it viable.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@tdpauw/116709030423523606
"Yet, at the boundaries, the organisation must adapt and respond to changes in the environment. Therefore, it has to be open to environmental signals. As such, at its boundaries, it is an open system."
...
"While Emery & Trist define the external textures and Thompson explains the organisational structure to survive the environment and isolate the core work, Jay R. Galbraith articulates organisation design using a micro-level dimension: the flow of information."
On architecture anti-patterns:
https://www.ufried.com/blog/essence_of_architecture_2/
On BDUF:
‘And as architecture is “about the parts of the system that are expensive to change”, any such changes would be very expensive. Grady Booch probably involuntarily fueled this fear with his famous quote:
“Architecture represents the significant design decisions that shape a system, where significant is measured by cost of change.”’
