DADD2019

The Dutch LAC architecture conference has been running for 20 years. This year marks the first edition of its successor, the Digital Architecture and Design Day, dubbed Daddy. Daddy is an obvious attempt to try and revitalize the conference, going from a two-day schedule to one, and changing to English as the language of choice (although not all speakers went through the trouble of translating all their slides). The theme of the year: “Putting strategy into practice”.

After a long day of talks, I was left wondering. Wondering about what I actually learned about putting strategy into practice? Is it blogging more? Is it CEX sells? Is it the arrival of the data steward? Also wondering about the relevance of architecture as a discipline. What is the progress after 20+ years of talking about oversight, control, governance, and strategic alignment? What are we, as a community, actually proud of? Have we established some common ground? Are we looking forward to a bright future? Or, have we become the dreadful boomers that lost touch with reality.

It is certainly a fair question to raise.

Don’t get me wrong. Personally, I still passionately believe there is a need for architecture. Architecture, to put it simply, that delivers on the promise of the whole being more than just the sum of its parts. I am convinced that any organization who just decomposes its complexity into ever smaller parts until they are easy enough to implement for a reasonably skillful team, is up for a surprise. Sure, an organization can only succeed if it's more than just a bunch of (micro)services, if it has some common ground, is clearly focused, and if it is somehow different from its competitors. If anything, architecture is more important than ever in today's world.

But today's world is also markedly different from twenty years ago. Processes have changed, technologies have changed, and expectations have changed. We need to deliver great solutions cheaper, better and faster than ever before. If we don’t play this race, somebody else will, and before we know it, we’re becoming the next Kodak. If survival is part of your strategy, IT renewal and revitalization are simply indispensable.

I was also left wondering about the Digital Architecture Design. Haven’t seen a single one during the day, frankly. The conference may have been a bit of a misnomer, but I did have some meaningful discussions on the topic in the sidelines. Marc Lankhorst, one of the driving forces behind ArchiMate, shared an insight about architecture modeling. The architecture is not inside the boxes, dummy, it is in the connections between the boxes! We should create a modeling language that expresses this much better. That's where architects can still add value. That’s where synergies take place. That’s where you can still add value to the sum total of the interacting parts. How very true that is.

It has been reassuring that I’m not the only one who is struggling with catching the solutions I design for cloud-native architectures in ArchiMate – our cherished modeling language of choice. I’m not the only one asking if the layering of technology, software, and business is still a valid abstraction of complexities – while digital transformation and cloudification are taking place. I’m not the only one who struggles with concepts having a different representation in different views. So, dear program committee of digital architecture design, how is it you missed one of the most important challenges for the community at large as a topic for your conference? Have you perhaps grown out of touch?

There is so much going on. Most organizations are working on their cloud strategy, be it public, private or hybrid clouds. And the delivery model is changing from virtual machines to containers and serverless frameworks. Agility, efficiency, speed, it is all there. Lower costs, happier developers, and more robust solutions, what’s not to like? But it is also a massive shift away from the traditional way of working. Who needs a CMDB, that costly and error-prone registry of IT components in production, when Kubernetes can simply tell you the real actual configuration any time you want? Who still wants a corporate architecture repository, if it is not aligned with Kubernetes? Who wants to build a warehouse from data only, if message streams or so much more powerful? I mean, we have the technology to do things smarter, it has been pioneered by big tech already, and the enterprise solutions are entering the market right now. So again, dear program committee, how can it be this was not scheduled. How come the word 'cloud’, was mentioned just once, in the description of a sponsor presentation, while 'cloud-native’ was missing entirely? Have you grown out of touch?

I’m always on the hunt for emerging technologies that might help me design better architectures. I went over the conference program time and again. Is there anything innovative on the schedule? Something new to discover? Well, I found one. Streaming analytics, one of my favorite topics. And certainly, a domain where technologies are moving fast. Other than this? A spark of the future? A valuable insight into where things are going? I failed to find it.

By the way, it is not that there were no proposals at all on the emerging cloud-native architectures. I know from first-hand experience of a proposal on “cell-based architecture”, discussing exactly the challenges and emerging solutions on using cloud orchestration as the engine of architectural design and governance. How you actually can design for highly scalable yet manageable microservice architectures. How you can generate your Kubernetes configuration files from your architectural design. How you can observe your architecture, be in control, and verify it works as designed. All cool stuff, on the frontline of innovation.

My talk got rejected. Fair enough, things happen. Especially if you have a lot of exciting topics to choose from. But that was not the reason it got rejected. You know what? My talk got rejected because of lack of novelty. I kid you not. Dear program committee, how dare you.

Ok boomer. There’s no room left for denial. You’ve become obsolete. This is your Kodak moment, Daddy. It’s time to make room for a new generation of architects.