The majority of failures you will see will actually be good ones – mini failures as decisions are taken by those who are less experienced. These are good because the process facilitates quick decisions, by those who need them, and more importantly, it facilitates transparency and rapid identification of failures (as those who took the decision will be aware of the issues as they code it) and a safe means to re-visit, and share the learnings. Embrace these, calling them out specifically and celebrating them in the AAF. This is a key aspect of building a learning culture.
To learn most effectively you need to feel safe, and when learning collectively everyone benefits from the broadest, most diverse range of inputs contributing to discussions. Remember, in this approach, we are explicitly not looking for consensus, but we are looking for a broad range of inputs and voices. It is here that the next failure mode lies, and it is far more insidious and damaging than the first. This second failure mode arises when you, in your job as a conversation-starter and space-holder, fail to include all who ought to be contributing and deciding and learning. For a great part early adoption stages of this style of architecture can feel like great successes. “It’s working! More and more people are taking decisions, writing them up in ADRs, giving advice and discussing them in the AAF! I’ve never seen such engagement with principles before!”. Only later, on reflection, will you realise the gains could have been far greater. It is precisely when this first flush of satisfaction strikes that you must be most on your guard. Are you really observing mass participation and learning, or is it a core group of usual suspects? You mitigate this problem actively. Watch out for who contributes. Amplify voices and ensure others listen to the quieter contributors. Make sure influence is balanced and not based on reputation, tenure or place in the hierarchy. Actively encourage many viewpoints and highlight the value it brings so that it becomes self-sustaining.
The third failure mode is an early warning that you are encountering the preceding failure mode, however, this one lives more in the grey area between desired and unwelcome. As you proceed along this journey you will uncover off-the-grid decisions. Decisions which never came up at the AAF, and which never made it into an ADR. There are two ways to approach them. The first, correct way, is to treat the discovery as what you hope it is – an honest mistake, and an opportunity to learn and teach others. Perhaps the decide-ees weren’t even aware of the fact it was a key decision they were taking. Perhaps they were under pressure from elsewhere. Perhaps they thought it wasn’t as significant as it turned out to be. Perhaps they felt they would be shouted down in the AAF. Whatever the reason, treat it as a way for both them, and you, to learn. To improve the process. The other, wrong way to treat these, is to fall back to old ways, and take back control. Which takes us nicely to the failure mode which completely destroys this approach and all that it promises.
It’s easy to slip into this fourth and most dangerous failure mode, and so it needs constant vigilance on your part. The only thing which needs to happen to trigger this is for “capital-A” architects such as yourself to fail to trust people; it is to not practice what you preach; it is to not clear enough space for the mini failures and consequent learning opportunities just mentioned; it is to continue to perform “shadow architecture” behind the scenes to make sure things still go how you think they ought to, despite all the signals from elsewhere. The sole benefit of this failure mode is that it becomes evident very rapidly as all the benefits I’ve listed above fail to materialize.
If you’re wondering if it’s this key failure mode which makes this approach to architecture hard to pull off you’d be right. I have been lucky in the past. Colleagues have called me out when I’ve made decisions for others, and I’ve caught myself getting frustrated that folks don’t know what I know. But then I realise I’m failing in my real task as a practitioner of architecture – I’m failing to get the right conversations happening, with the right people, at the right time. Remember that (perhaps even task others with calling you out when you fail to stick to the process) and you’ll be surprised how easy (and satisfying) it is to succeed.
Source: Scaling the Practice of Architecture, Conversationally, Andrew Harmel-Law, https://martinfowler.com/articles/scaling-architecture-conversationally.html