1 What is architecture modernization?
This chapter covers
- Why modern architecture is a competitive advantage
- Designing socio-technical architecture with value streams
- Aligning software architecture with business domains
- Architecture modernization is a journey, not a target architecture
- Architecting for product-centric operating models
Antiquated legacy architectures are a business risk and a competitive disadvantage. They are hard and slow to change and prone to unreliability, handing the advantage to your competitors. Southwest airlines demonstrated this during their 2022 scheduling crisis caused by a decades-old scheduling system. In one week, 14500 flights were canceled and their brand suffered serious damage as they became a top international news headline for all the wrong reasons. In contrast, carefully designed modern architecture is a strong competitive advantage. Cazoo, a UK-based startup, built an online car dealership in just 90 days and became the UK’s fastest ever Unicorn (https://news.sky.com/story/online-car-retailer-cazoo-becomes-fastest-british-unicorn-12012734), hitting a $1 billion valuation in under 18 months. A key factor of Cazoo’s success was their ability to leverage modern architecture practices and technologies, like Serverless, that enabled them to build an elastically scalable, full-featured product while moving at pace.