Simon Rohrer

YouTube video by Agile meets Architecture Simon Rohrer - 4 Lenses on Organisations

. @simon.bvssh.com 's "4 Lenses on Organizations" recording is now live! Watch as he masterfully connects socio-technical frameworks with organizational agility to drive effective change. Check out the full session and subscribe to our channel for more architecture wisdom!

youtu.be/fhhrLxBH-Ws

It’s not precise to say:

“If you cannot deal with monolith, microservices won’t work for you!”.

The actual phrase should be:

"If you can’t deal with modularity, then neither monoliths nor microservices will work for you."

3/

Just quoting Liz K :)

4 Lenses on Organisations We'll look at 4 different models of an organisation. 4 different lenses on how to organise efficiently and effectively to deliver value to different parties.

Learn from @simon.bvssh.com how Value Streams, BVSSH, VSM, and Liquid Organisation models offer complementary perspectives to balance agility and architecture. Explore a multi-model approach—buy your ticket! www.agile-meets-architecture.com/sessions/202...

This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club. #GOTOcon #GOTObookclubhttp://gotopia.tech/bookclubRead the full transcription of the interview here:https... Better Value Sooner Safer Happier • Simon Rohrer & Eduardo da Silva • GOTO 2025

Discover key strategies for transformation with insights from Better Value, Sooner, Safer, Happier. @esilva.net & @simon.bvssh.com discuss shifting from outputs to outcomes & embracing improvement.

Happy to chat more (SSH Slack?) – we use the Backstage service catalog to locate components and their code and docs including ADRs. High level guidelines otherwise pretty much as above, detailed guidelines evolving (eg what C4 diagrams to use), what’s mandatory, what’s advised

Neutral Quality is too much to ask for, shitty software is the norm. As a testing community, we have failed to make software better. And let me be clear, developers have also failed. We are in the same boat here. I firmly believe that most people working in software de...

We have failed as testers & developers to make software better. It's simply not up to us, and I think we should be honest towards ourselves about how little impact we have on quality.... read the post and make up your own mind.

You can also keep sniffing the copium if that's what you prefer.

Evolution vs Revolution

Invite over inflict.
Not one size fits all.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

#BVSSH

We have a dual strategy of transient docs in Confluence and long-lived docs in Markdown displayable in Backstage. Lowest level docs are in the teams’ own git repos so they can change whenever they want. Higher level (system-of-systems docs) are in an enterprise architecture repo as internal o/s

The book or course I think should exist.

"The absolute beginners guide to running your own apps in production"

Starting at building apps that are meant to run in production, through CI/CD, managing data structure changes, producing/consuming/understanding telemetry and incident management.

No amount of automated tests can replace skilled, dedicated testers who know how to do exploratory testing 💪

— a software engineer

From More Agile Testing,
@janetgregoryca.bsky.social
@lisacrispin.bsky.social

I second that!!

But consensus isn’t always progress. It often leads to what the Dutch famously call “polderen”—a compromise where no one really gets what they want. The result? Solutions that look fine on paper but lack real buy-in. And without that, implementation stalls, leaving teams frustrated and momentum lost

Alidad Hamidi on LinkedIn: #sociotechnical #systemiclens #systemsthinking #observer With the wider adoption of the term “socio-technical” in IT, particularly in architectural circles, there is a growing tendency to treat “socio-technical…

Great post from @alidad.bsky.social on LinkedIn on systems thinking in general and the #sociotechnical in particular.
www.linkedin.com/posts/alidad...
Check out the comments too, with great input from @technologytulip.bsky.social.

No disagreements here on those two, but I do wonder if there's a *third* value of software, and that is WHAT WE LEARNED FROM CREATING IT. And, you might not surprised to hear, I think that might even be the *most* valuable thing.

I have been referred to someone called “The Beard”

Not even kidding.

Schedule - Agile meets Architecture Agile meets Architecture is the conference bridging agile software development and software architecture since 2022.

The Agile meets Architecture conference schedule is here! Join @swardley.bsky.social, @tekiegirl.bsky.social, & Oussama Zaki amongst others to explore Agile & Architecture’s synergy. Early bird tickets available until Jan 16, 2025! www.agile-meets-architecture.com/2025/schedule

A Week At The TBM Conference Get a review of the recent TBM Conference which focused on product centricity and transparency in the modern IT operating model.

My TBM Council write up www.forrester.com/blogs/a-week...

“Product centricity isn’t just a leading-edge trend; in many large orgs, it’s a done deal…”

Business architecture = people architecture = technical architecture = business architecture...

Antipattern: org design without consideration of the flow of value or the technical architecture.

#BVSSH

How to verify your Bluesky account - Bluesky Here's how to verify your Bluesky account by setting your website as your username.

Here you go bsky.social/about/blog/4...

Variety Engineering Any organization for it to be viable it must be capable of dealing with the complexity of its environment.  Organizations are not able to create the same amount of complexity internally as their en…

Also here also here systemic2016.wordpress.com/variety-engi...

and here thevsmtest.org/VSM-Guide/in...

A very rough and partial draft systems thinking reading list Shared for a friend of a friend Draft systems thinking reading list Benjamin.taylor@systemspractice.org www.linkedin.com/in/antlerboy www.twitter.com/antlerboy Intro A very partial and incomplete l…

I promised you more @ccombe.bsky.social so might as well do it in public here! I've found this reading list incredibly useful stream.syscoi.com/2020/05/06/a...

In particular this drive.google.com/file/d/1s0TT...

and this drive.google.com/file/d/10DdK...

Page with the quote in the post, as well as: Ashby's Law: Address Variety with Variety Of course, our systems exist in complex contexts, with (generally) complex demands. "In colloquial terms Ashby's Law has come to be understood as a simple proposition: if a system is to be able to deal successfully with the diversity of challenges that its environment produces, then it needs to have a repertoire of responses which is (at least) as nuanced as the problems thrown up by the environment. So a viable system is one that can handle the variability of its environment. Or, as Ashby put it, only variety can absorb variety." - John Naughton Jabe Bloom: "The quickest way to explain Ashby's Law is as follows: If I am a fencer and I have 3 ways of thrusting at people, and everybody else has three ways of parrying those thrusts, it will be an even game. [.] I will be as in control as I can be. If someone else figures out another thrust, I will then be required to learn another parry otherwise I will always lose." Implication: The more different kinds of customers your business has, the more complexity you will need to absorb, in order to respond to that.

And

Brian Marick: 'In the 80's, Robert Glass analyzed bugs in fielded avionics software. Found faults of omission most important. I liked his characterization of them: "code not complex enough for the problem''

Jabe Bloom: "Sounds like Ashby's Law."

Summary slide here:

Let me share my take-aways.

1. He borrows from Martin Fowler (a lot) - I like the idea of a conference talk titled "Martin Fowler talked about this 20 years ago!"

This principle matches @ruthmalan.bsky.social and Dana Bredemeyer's "minimalist architecture". More on this in this great article by @esilva.net: esilva.net/tla_insights...

💡I love @simon.bvssh.com's framing of enterprise architecture (and his continuous work on modernizing the topic): It is all about aligning (and considering) the business architecture, organizational structure, and systems architecture. Approaching things in isolation will lead to subpar outcomes!

Want to scale Agile?
Don't.
Continuously descale the work.

Descaling the work IS scaling agility.

Smaller teams, smaller increments of value, alleviating impediments to flow, breaking dependencies, with high alignment via OKRs, safety and minimal viable guardrails.

#BVSSH

YouTube video by Agile meets Architecture Simon Rohrer — Modern Enterprise Architecture: architecting for outcomes "Modern Enterprise A..."

Watch the full talk youtu.be/ASE6Pt3fnxM?...

"Enterprise Architecture isn’t just about systems—it’s about aligning value streams, organizational structure & systems architecture for sustainable flow." - @simon.fadedglamour.com
Ready to drive outcomes? Join us at the AmA Conf 2025! Schedule coming soon.

Get your boss on board, or find out what those who rely on you are worrying about. Based on feedback from our readers, here are five books that leaders should have on their radar this winter.