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Weekly Reflection #19 - Design for Evolution
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Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe) InsightThings change. Requirements change. Teams change. And yet, the systems we build have to live through all of it. One of my favorite software engineering books is Building Evolutionary Architectures. This book introduced me to one of my favorite software architecture concepts: fitness functions. These are executable checks that encode what "healthy" means for your system. If you've ever written a unit test, you've written a narrowly scoped fitness function. The book frames evolvable systems along two axes:
Fitness functions tie the two together. They are the guardrails that let you change a system confidently without breaking it in new and surprising ways. I used to try to design systems that anticipated every future requirement up front. Eventually, this strategy loses. Even the "perfect" design will suffer from bit rot if uncared for. The best systems don't try to plan for all possible futures. They define what "healthy" looks like and evolve from there. WisdomThere are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.—Donella H. Meadows Reflection"Perfect is the enemy of good." Where have you delayed shipping something good because you were still chasing the "perfect" design? Lagniappe
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Weekly Reflections Newsletter
Practical insights on platform engineering, developer experience, and building teams that ship. Each issue is written to be useful, actionable, and applicable. No filler, no promotions-only emails. Enter your email and sign up for free right now.
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