Collectively architecting systems

This resource first appeared in issue #28 on 13 Jun 2020 and has tags Technical Leadership: Other, Becoming A Manager: Meetings

Architecture Jams: a Collaborative Way of Designing Software - Gergely Orosz
Proposals and Braintrusts - Nathan Broslawsky

These two articles both describe approaches to usefully open up architectural or other proposals to input from a group. The first, an “Architecture Jam”, is sort of half-brainstorming, half-architectural white boarding session; it can work remotely, but is definitely synchronous. The second is more asynchronous - writing up a proposal, and sending it off to a group of people whose job is, explicitly, to improve the proposal.

Either could work in our context. There are two keys for the architecture jams. First is to have a plausible but ideally (IMHO) unfinished proposal to give the group something concrete to kick off discussion. Second is to facilitate discussion well to make sure people are contributing (some good pointers are here, which is worth reading in its own right).

The more formal proposal and request for comments has the advantage that more of it can be asynchronous; but you’d really need to be sure of the starting point, and to ensure that those entrusted with improvements feel like they can propose significant changes.