Facilitating Software Architecture: Empowering Teams to Make Architectural Decisions

by Andrew Harmel-Law, Mike Cooper (Narrator)

The software architect role is evolving. As systems and their interactions with the teams that build, run, and evolve them become more complex, it's often impossible for those playing the traditional architect roles to be everywhere they need to be. There's simply too much architecture to be done, and the situation has reached a breaking point.

There's a better way. Author Andrew Harmel-Law shows you how architects and development teams can collaborate to create and evolve more efficient architectures for their systems. Techniques in this book will help you learn how to create a mindset that allows everyone to practice architecture and build the best systems they've ever experienced.

With this book, you

Understand the new dynamics that affect modern software delivery Learn a methodology that brings software architecture and development together Nurture the fundamental interplay of decisions, advice, architecture, and feedback from running systems Initiate practices that maximize benefits and mitigate risks Create an approach tuned to architecture, everyone's skills, and your organization's culture PLEASE When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Audible Audio

Published July 8, 2025

About the author

A Tech Principal at Thoughtworks, Andrew specializes in domain-driven design, org design, software and systems architecture, agile delivery, build tools and automation.

Andrew is also an author and trainer for O’Reilly. They’ve written one book about facilitating software architecture and one chapter about implementing the Accelerate/DORA four key metrics. They also run regular online training sessions in Domain-Driven Design (First Steps) and Architecture Decision Making by Example.

Experienced across the software development lifecycle and in many sectors, what motivates them is the humane delivery and sustainable evolution of large-scale software solutions that fulfill complex user needs. They understand that people, architecture, process and tooling all have key roles to play in achieving this.

Andrew has been involved with OSS to a greater or lesser extent since their career began; as a user, contributor, expert group member, or paid advocate—most notably as one of the Jenkins JobDSL originators.

Andrew enjoys sharing their experience as much as possible. This sharing is not only seen in their formal consulting engagements and writing, but also informally through mentoring, blog posts, conferences (keynoting, speaking and organising), and open-sourcing their code.