You're upgrading your system architecture. How do you balance innovation with reliability?

Innovation can never be a driver; it is a possibility! The number one goal is delivering to its purpose, reliably! Innovation must be weighed against support capabilities, integration capabilities, new levels of risk. Start with reading company policies that might apply; new rules or regulations. Document & build a reference low level stack with guidelines for use. Rules and guidelines help control shadow-it and re-use, reducing cost and increasing availability. Build security into the the new design from the get-go; tagging on security after the design is counter productive and rarely does a good job. Consider base concepts like zero trust to help defend your systems from the ground up.

Architecture are designed to sustain for long duration and adaptable to changes. Each system have there own pros and cons. It is improved with new feature/solution of technology and stabilized with best practices. A new technology should be evaluated against baseline of architecture to keep the core intact with innovation. Create and do failover on backup and support system before transitioning. Life of innovation should not bring technical debt. Try to get feedback from existing users to understand real impact of the new solutions and proceed accordingly.

Performing a comprehensive risk assessment prior to executing any architectural modifications is imperative to preserve the integrity and functionality of your system. From the standpoint of solution architecture, this method guarantees that the advantages of introducing new technology are weighed against possible disadvantages

As you deploy your upgraded architecture, balance reliability and new technologies. i give you these points: - Don't Be a Lab Mouse: Use tech with a proven production track record. Choose reliable foundations for your architectural masterpiece. - Love women, not Tech: Don’t abandon it for something shiny unless it offers real performance, efficiency, or time-saving. Tech should serve your needs, not your whims. - Scalability First: Choose tech that supports future growth. Avoid vendor lock-in, but if necessary, treat it as a calculated risk and account for it as technical debt. - Stay Flexible : Opt for modular, adaptable tech for easy updates and integrations. Flexibility is key to long-term success.

There are internal and external risks that are equally valuable to consider. Internally you should consider things like security and performance all the way through to your team's skill and ability to support the change. With so much of our systems relying on the cloud and data, please also consider latency, ingress, and egress and the costs associated with them. Externally you should consider the market for sustainability, strategic planning (if M&A is in your future, consider aligning your architecture for exit), and finally, market scan to understand what's on the horizon and ask yourself if the changes you're making threaten competitive scale. Use a 360 degree lens as a decision maker.

Balancing innovation with reliability when updating a system's architecture is a critical challenge, but one that can be managed with a methodical approach. Use controlled experimentation: - Implement new technologies on a small scale to test their feasibility and impact before wider adoption. - Use test environments that replicate the production system to verify the reliability of new solutions. Balancing innovation and reliability requires a strategic and methodical approach that integrates risk assessment, controlled experimentation, continuous monitoring and a strong DevOps culture. Gradually implementing new technologies is essential to ensure that innovation does not compromise system stability and security.

While incremental changes can be a valid approach to established services, adopting new technologies often necessitates a "lift and shift" approach to adopting the new service(s) for deployment in the production environment. Developing a solid deployment plan that involves aligning existing systems for parallel operation with any existing services, developing a Proof of Concept, planning for multi-staged pilot deployment, and providing for adequate training ahead of deployment can take the sting out of a migration, especially with untested emerging technologies. A well planned, well communicated, and well tested pilot deployment may take a bit longer, but it will ensure business continuity, smooth the rollout, and surface any pitfalls.

While incremental changes can be a valid approach to established services, adopting new technologies often necessitates a "lift and shift" approach to adopting the new service(s) for deployment in the production environment.

_Testing Protocols: The Key to Reliable Innovation_ To ensure innovative technologies don't compromise reliability, robust testing protocols are crucial. Before deployment, test new technologies rigorously in a controlled environment to: - Identify potential issues - Address them before they impact your live system Additionally, leverage: - Automated testing - Continuous integration - Deployment practices to catch problems early and frequently, ensuring reliable innovation.

The saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" perfectly captures the challenge of balancing innovation with reliability when updating system architecture. To navigate this, it's crucial to perform a thorough risk assessment, make incremental changes, develop strong testing protocols, ensure seamless legacy integration using APIs or middleware, gather continuous user feedback, and keep documentation current. By following these practices, you can safely introduce innovations while maintaining system stability and reliability.

Integration projects involving innovative new projects are rarely conducted alongside a complete overhaul of an organization's architecture. Both the upstream and downstream dependencies of the new service(s) must be carefully assessed for integration feasibility during the proof of concept phase of the project. Deploying the "cool new tool" isn't very cool if it breaks business critical applications or isn't compatible with an upstream service dependency. A well-designed POC phase should surface any of these issues. If a reliable, supportable solution to smoothly integrate a service cannot be found sometimes it is better to backburner deploying a new technology until the service matures or other architectural upgrades are conducted first.

For integration it's required to understand source and target systems/applications. Define scope and communication protocols supported by legacy, new technology and target applications. Once done you need to perform multiple levels of testing to cover all scenarios. You might need to perform data transformation and formation to make it usable for the application so mapping service should be used to achieve it. Integration is never straight forward as you are in the middle of a solution so, communication and clarify from both ends and achieve target. Integration is awesome if you get it, ?? else it's a pain from every angle.

User adoption is key to success. It is important to listen to user feedback and incorporate it into upgrading the system architecture so that users feel valued. The users are ultimately going to use the system; hence, understanding the pain points and ensuring that it meets their needs will ensure greater success.

Here your how balance innovation with reliability 1. Risk Assessment and Mitigation 2. Incremental Innovation 3. Robust Testing and Quality Assurance 4. Scalability and Flexibility 5. Documentation and Knowledge Sharing 6. Performance Monitoring and Analytics 7. Stakeholder Involvement 8. Legacy System Support With these strategies, you can achieve a reliable and innovative system architecture that meets the needs of your users and supports your business goals.

Feedback provides real time kpi of the system. Let's talk about cars, each car manufacturer wants to provide the best features and comfort with value. But once it is used in the real world it will be different. Users might reject the product and it will be hard. It's similar with technology solutions as well, users avoid change, but if they feel and realise it's worth the money ??. They will promote it with positive feedback. So KPIs are a must in the lab, but feedback is mandatory in the real world.

Documentation is an integral part of the architecture. It helps to understand underlying objectives and assumptions for the system. As architecture evolves, documents are left unchecked. It creates person oriented design, where in and out of the system is controlled by a single person. To avoid it documents should be in sync with updates so everyone can refer and utilise the knowledge accordingly. For personal growth as well, as a contributor in a document you get acknowledgement in the long term. If you do your work without documentation it will be lost and credit/effort will be lost somewhere. Documentation persists and keeps a history of the author so keep equal focus on the document.

Balancing innovation with reliability during a system architecture upgrade involves ensuring thorough documentation updates. Start by documenting new architecture components, their interactions, and their impact on existing systems. Update system diagrams, API specifications, and deployment procedures to reflect changes accurately. Include details on new features, configurations, and dependencies. Ensure that documentation for troubleshooting and rollback procedures is also updated. Regularly review and revise documentation as the system evolves to maintain reliability and support future innovation effectively. SHARE it with the team in REAL TIME

Innovate when necessary, ensure the system is reliable to a point as needed by design/requirement. Innovation is not an end goal by itself. It should be enabling you to achieve your project goals. And reliability built into a system may be limited by factors like cost and risk (and consequences thereof) the sponsors are willing to bear.

[1] Identify points of isolation and coexistence: how can the new implementation coexist with the older one, concurrently without affecting it. 'Microservices' enable this by allowing new stuff to be deployed in new instances, that run alongside the older versions. [2] Design for reliability: Envision more scenarios, including incorrect use, overload, failure of infra, weak interfaces etc. Address each in design. For instance, if a node fails, all its tasks on it should automatically be rescheduled on a different node. Thus, the end Users would 'sometimes' find tasks taking longer but will always see their tasks complete.

La fiabilité d'un système est une exigence transversale et doit donc porter sur une vue du besoin fonctionnel afin de challenger l'architecture physique du système. Aussi une phase de reverse engineering est absolument nécessaire de fa?on à challenger les opportunités fonctionnelles versus techniques.