Distance is the amount of technical and organizational coordination required for related parts to implement a change together.
Distance is the socio-technical coordination required for related parts to change together. It is one factor in coupling pain: Pain = Strength × Volatility × Distance. section 12.1
Distance grows across both organizational and technical boundaries:
Organizationally, teams reporting to different managers or working in different offices may need more coordination. section 12.1
Technically, distance ranges from variables in one function to classes in one codebase and classes in separate microservices or codebases. section 12.1
Local change versus coordinated deployments
Changing a few lines in one function may involve one team; changing two codebases integrated over a network may require coordinated changes and deployments across two teams. section 12.1
How Architecture Modernization: Socio-technical alignment of software, strategy, and structure covers it
How deep it goes
Defines organizational and technical distance and illustrates a scale from variables in one function to separate microservices.
Examples
Contrasts variables in one function with classes across codebases, and teams with differing managers or office locations.
What you can do after
Evaluate coupling costs by assessing coordination distance alongside strength and volatility.
How it connects
Connects distance to coupling strength, volatility, coupling pain, and socio-technical coordination.
Data Without LabelsA distance metric is a distance function that satisfies the metric-space properties, including nonnegativity, symmetry, and the triangle inequality.
Advanced Algorithms and Data StructuresA distance function is a function that assigns a path-cost contribution or distance value to an edge or other argument.
Machine Learning System DesignA function that assigns a numerical measure of separation or dissimilarity between mathematical objects or representations.
mahalanobis distanceincludes · Mahalanobis distance is a covariance-adjusted measure of separation between observations or between an observation and a reference distribution.
Euclidean distanceincludes · Euclidean distance is the straight-line distance between two points in Euclidean space, calculated as the square root of the sum of squared differences between corresponding coordinates.
similarity metricmeasures · A similarity measure is a rule that quantifies or characterizes how alike two objects or representations are according to selected properties.
This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Architecture Modernization: Socio-technical alignment of software, strategy, and structure. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.
