Wanted (or not): new design principles

Dec 2, 2014

Capgemini

I am currently in the middle of a series of inspiring discussions with other architects. The topic of these discussions is the question whether present day technological and social developments should induce new architectural principles. There are two factions: one side argues that technological developments are of all times and so nothing is new, fundamentally. The other side argues that the combination of big data, cloud, internet of things, and especially the use that is being made of them, asks for a reinvention of the architecture discipline, not only in behavior, but also in content.

The jury is still out, but at the moment I tend to support the second faction. From our discussions new design principles start to emerge that to me seem more than worthwhile to seriously consider and elaborate. Guidelines such as:

• Small;
• Designed to be disposable;
• Accessible by a search engine;
• Allowed to overlap;
• Transparent in behavior;
• Defined in terms of use, not reuse.

Whether it will turn out to be the above guidelines or different ones, an architecture paradigm shift is required. Because society is changing. It is not about the new technologies in themselves, there always will be new technologies. It is about the new rules of the game their widespread use generates, with new players in the field and power shifts between existing players. Especially, the new balance of power between customer and business. The game is afoot.

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Sogeti Labs

SogetiLabs gathers distinguished technology leaders from around the Sogeti world. It is an initiative explaining not how IT works, but what IT means for business.

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