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Summary of 'Empowering Teams: Decentralizing Architectural Decision-Making' Presentation
Speaker: Peter Hunter
Overview: Peter Hunter, a seasoned technology leader, shares insights from their journey of decentralizing architectural decision-making within engineering teams. The presentations focus on how this approach improved team alignment, expedited decision-making, and fostered a culture of ownership.
Key Points:
- Problem Identification: The transition began during the COVID-19 pandemic, aiming to re-architect a legacy system into a modern cloud-native SaaS platform.
- Teams and Tools: The organization created multiple product engineering teams, supported by enabling and platform teams. Architectural decisions were decentralized using tools like Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) and an Architectural Advisory Forum (AAF).
- Architectural Principles: Clear architectural principles were established to align with business strategy, guiding the decision-making process across teams.
- Advice Process: Any team could make decisions after seeking advice from relevant parties and recording decisions publicly. This ensured transparency and accountability.
- Implementation Stages: Teams went through phases from not realizing their decision-making autonomy to actively proposing new technologies and practices.
- Challenges and Reflection: Implementing the system had challenges such as transitioning from a centralized decision-making model and dealing with the legacy system's complexities.
Benefits:
- Enhanced trust and transparency within teams.
- Improved alignment with business strategies, reducing release cycles.
- Empowered teams with ownership over their projects, leading to stronger architectural decisions.
Conclusion: Decentralizing architectural decision-making can significantly improve organizational innovation and agility by empowering teams and utilizing structured processes like ADRs and AAFs.
This is the end of the AI-generated content.
In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, centralised architectural decision-making can become a bottleneck to delivery performance and innovation. Through stories from our own journey, we’ll share how decentralising decisions improved alignment across teams, empowered faster decision-making, and fostered a culture of ownership. We'll share lessons learned implementing lightweight governance, defining clear architectural guardrails through architectural principles, and the tools to support decentralised decisions.
Interview:
What is the focus of your work?
To lead the development of a scalable SaaS platform, through guiding, mentoring, and empowering our teams.
What’s the motivation for your talk?
Sharing our experiences of embracing change through autonomous, empowered teams and decentralized architectural decision-making has transformed our processes and improved our ability to deliver value. By discussing the challenges we’ve faced and the strategies we’ve developed, we hope to inspire others who are navigating similar transitions.
Who is your talk for?
Architects and Engineers looking to scale the practice of architecture or looking for an alternative to "Ivory Tower" architecture.
What do you want someone to walk away with from your presentation?
An understanding of how they can use Architectural Principles, Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) and create an advice forum for decision-making. Inspiring them to try a new approach to the practice of architecture.
What do you think is the next big disruption in software?
The obvious answer is AI, but we're specifically interested in legacy modernization and keeping platforms current.
Speaker
Peter Hunter
Head of R&D, Tech Architect @OpenGI, Led the Transformation of a Legacy Solution Into a Modern Cloud-Based SaaS Platform
A technology leader with 25+ years of experience in the Insurance industry, Peter led the transformation of a legacy solution into a modern cloud-based SaaS platform, significantly improving scalability and performance and allowing teams to unlock the benefits of cloud. He transformed the role of architecture within OpenGI, empowering engineering teams to make key architectural decisions. He is currently driving innovation as Head of R&D, fostering a culture of experimentation across the organisation.
Find Peter Hunter at:
Speaker
Elena Stojmilova
Technical Lead @Open GI
Technical Lead at Open GI with over 12 years of experience in software development, specializing in modernizing legacy systems and building cloud-native architectures, with a focus on creating scalable, future-ready solutions. Over the past six years, she has led a team with the autonomy to design architectures, select technologies, and implement effective approaches to achieve their goals.
Find Elena Stojmilova at:
Date
Wednesday Apr 9 / 02:45PM BST ( 50 minutes )
Location
Fleming (3rd Fl.)
