Building Evolutionary Architectures

GOTO Berlin 2017

In our industry, one of the only guarantees is change. Many of today’s tools, technologies, and business models will soon cease to exist, only to be replaced by newer ones. Architects face the challenge of planning for today’s systems knowing that the problems of tomorrow will be completely different from the problems of today. Evolutionary architecture is an architectural approach that prioritises change as a first principle but balances this need with delivering value early.

Architects who adopt evolutionary architecture approaches make better choices that enable future change. In this talk, we will explore what evolutionary architecture is and why it’s important. We'll examine some well-known architectural styles, looking at how well they adapt to change and fit the characteristics of evolutionary architecture, before outlining the principles that guide architectural and design decisions and concrete practices to help teams build systems that can evolve over time.