With the pace of change in the technology landscape, business models, and customer expectations, we have outlived the ability to plan our technology roadmaps for multiple years. We’ve been rethinking how to keep software systems able to adjust to the changes that actually happen, and not just the changes we think will happen. This thinking, embodied in the concepts of Evolutionary Architecture, allows us to monitor that the architectural characteristics that are critical to the success of our systems are retained as the functionality, the business, and the technology evolve.

CTO Emerita, Thoughtworks, and co-author of the book ‘Building Evolutionary Architectures: Support Constant Change’, Dr. Rebecca Parsons, will take participants through a thorough exploration of the foundational principles that distinguish Evolutionary Architecture from traditional architectural approaches. The talk will present some principles of evolutionary architecture that allow systems to respond to change without needing to predict the future. She will then briefly describe techniques that realize these principles and discuss how these approaches support adaptability of systems in an evolutionary way. She will also describe some innovative approaches to fitness functions developed to preserve different kinds of architectural characteristics.