How to make architecture decisions
It’s not just enough for me personally to be running a fast OODA loop—in a large group, everyone needs to be autonomously making frequent, high-quality, local prioritization decisions, without needing a round-trip through me. To get there, they need to be ambiently aware of:
- what else is going on around them, so they can coordinate and update on new
benkuhn.net • How I’ve run major projects
Gokul's S.P.A.D.E. Toolkit: How to implement Square's famous decision-making framework
Gokul Rajaramcoda.io... See moreYou need a complex mix of centralisation and decentralisation. While overall vision, goals, and strategy usually comes from the top, it is vital that extreme decentralisation dominates operationally so that decisions are fast and unbureaucratic. Information must be shared centrally and horizontally across the organisation — it is not either/or. Big
Engineering organizations today have ballooned to huge numbers of people, but these huge engineering organizations don’t exactly have a reputation for high velocity output. Some of this is the result of what happens with products at scale: it is just fundamentally faster and easier to iterate, improve, or change a product with 100 users than it is... See more