The Surprising Implications of Architecting for Generality with Michael Nygard

On this continuation of Gene Kim’s interview with Michael Nygard, Senior Vice President, Travel Solutions Platform Development Enterprise Architecture, for Sabre, they discuss his reflections on Admiral Rickover's work with the US Naval Reactor Core and how it may or may not resonate with the principles we hold so near and dear in the DevOps community. They also tease apart the learnings from the architecture of the Toyota Production System and their ability to drive down the cost of change. 

They also discuss how we can tell when there are genuinely too many “musical notes” or when those extra notes allow for better and simpler systems that are easier to build and maintain and can even make other systems around them simpler too? And how so many of the lessons and sensibilities came from working with Rich Hickey, the creator of the Clojure programming language. 

Bio:

Michael Nygard strives to raise the bar and ease the pain for developers around the world. He shares his passion and energy for improvement with everyone he meets, sometimes even with their permission. Living with systems in production taught Michael about the importance of operations and writing production-ready software. Highly-available, highly-scalable commerce systems are his forte.

Michael has written and co-authored several books, including 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know and the bestseller Release It!, a book about building software that survives the real world. He is a highly sought speaker who addresses developers, architects, and technology leaders around the world.

Michael is currently Senior Vice President, Travel Solutions Platform Development Enterprise Architecture, for Sabre, the company reimagining the business of travel.

 

• Twitter: @mtnygard







 

You’ll Learn About:

• Admiral Rickover’s work with the Naval Nuclear Reactor Core


• Building great architecture for generality.


• Architecture as an organizing logic and means of software construction.


• Toyota Production System’s ability to drive down the cost of change through architecture


• Clojure programming language


• Cynefin framework


• How to know if a code is simpler or more complex



 

RESOURCES




























TIMESTAMPS

 

[00:09] Intro

[02:19] Mike’s reflections on Steve Spear, Admiral Rickover and the US Naval reactor core

[04:33] Admiral Rickover’s 1962 memo

[08:13] Cynefin framework

[12:40] Applying to software engineering

[16:06] Gene tells Mike a Steve Spear’s story

[18:58] 10+ deploys a day everyday at Flickr

[19:43] Back to the story

[24:34] Why th...