Build Stuff'15 Lithuania

Conway's Law says that "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations". We've seen this happen time and time again. Some organisations are fortunate enough that their communication structure happens to match their ideal architecture. Some organisations succeed in spite of their communication structures, but all too often the communication overheads result in systems that are delivered late, over budget and unfit for purpose.

But what if we're looking at it backwards? Maybe we should start with the system design, and then create an organisational structures that reflects it?

Dylan is the systems architect at Spotlight (www.spotlight.com), the UK's leading casting service. Since 1927, Spotlight has been used to cast productions from Monty Python and James Bond to Star Wars and Game of Thrones. Originally a printed directory, Spotlight has been on the web since 1996, and was one of the first companies in the UK to embrace digital publishing. Having successfully made the transition from a paper-based directory publisher to a digital services company, we now find ourselves in the unusual position of being nearly a century old, yet facing many of the same problems as a successful startup. In this session, we'll talk about how we're restructuring Spotlight so that our systems and our structure align with the natural domain boundaries of our business. We'll talk about the challenges we've faced - how do you promote microservices and modular architecture when some of your customers still think fax machines are a pretty neat idea? How can you decouple monolithic legacy systems, identify bottlenecks, and create just the right amount of architecture? We'll talk about systems integration patterns, and how to run the New Shiny alongside your legacy systems to avoid the risk of "big bang" launches. And you never know - we might even throw in a couple of good showbusiness stories.