Software is becoming easier to write than to understand
Coding tools can make software a lot cheaper to produce, but software engineering has never been constrained by typing code. The bottleneck is understanding, ownership, and design.
Ben Morris. Agile enterprise architecture.
Recent content on Ben Morris. Agile enterprise architecture.
Latest posts
You're not talking to an AI - you're talking to a platform
Large language models have become conflated with their delivery platforms - and this is setting some unreasonable expectations for what AI can do.
Your OAuth access token doesn't know who you are
Engineers often implement OAuth 2.0 in the mistaken belief that they can identify their users from access tokens.
Why AI won't kill SaaS (and how it will save it)
Far from being a ‘SaaS killer’, AI has the potential to breathe new life into established SaaS platforms and transform the way users engage with them.
Are we using AI to automate the wrong things?
LLMs are great for automating technical tasks, though using them to generate content may undermine authentic communication and knowledge sharing.
Design trade-offs for conversational AI agents
Agents are among the most IO bound applications you are likely to build, while conversational, ‘chat’-style interfaces bring extra constraints into play.
What should architects focus on - and what should be delegated to teams?
‘Architecture’ is such a wide term that it can be difficult to nail down exactly what architects should focus on…
Versioning doesn't make it any easier to manage change in APIs
Change in your API contracts is inevitable, but trying to manage this change through versioning usually creates more problems than it solves.
Enterprise architecture anti-patterns
Every organisation tends to organise technology decision making differently, but some of the problems associated with architecture can be remarkably consistent…
How to make architecture decisions
Knowing what decisions to make and when to make them can be something of a fine art
Why building AI-powered agents is so challenging. For now.
Despite growing excitement about the potential for AI-driven agents, there are a lot of problems to solve before we can build agent-based architectures on any scale…
Architecture governance is a spectrum: exploring styles of enterprise architecture
There is a spectrum of different styles of architecture governance, from the tightly structured and framework-driven, through to the deliberate absence of formal architecture.
Generative AI does not mean the “end of programming”
The demise of software engineers is one of those tired old tropes that refuses to die. Perhaps the programming revolution has already happened…?
Minimal Viable Architecture and the case for up-front design
Evolutionary design and iterative development only get you so far - you still need some level of up-front thinking and forward planning.
Establishing a new architecture practice in agile organisations
How should you go about building an architecture practice in organisations where people are allowed to say “no”? Ultimately, this becomes an exercise in persuasion, pragmatism, and patience.
The shared code fallacy: Why internal libraries can be an anti-pattern
Most internal shared libraries are based on the fallacy that code sharing always makes development more efficient.
Monoliths and the microservices backlash
We need a more nuanced understanding of how to get the best out of monoliths, microservices, and serverless architectures.
Internal developer platforms and the cult of Kubernetes
We all agree that engineering enablement is important, but “platform teams” can often be a fig leaf for organisational anti-patterns and overly complex Kubernetes implementations.
How can architecture improve agility and delivery flow?
Agile practices on their own are no guarantee of fast flow. You also need a planned architecture that enables team autonomy and supports rapid, iterative delivery.
When to use serverless architecture... and when not to
The potential benefits of an architecture based on serverless functions are nuanced, making it a good fit only for some very specific use cases.