Welcome to the composable workforce...

Composable. As Yossarian called for the death to all modifiers, I will call for a death to Composable. I will bookend this article with the word and then never use it again.

Our software vendor industry terminology is so very interesting to watch--how terms are created, whether they gain traction, how close they are to the reality, how meaningful, how explainable and understandable, how they eventually fade based on a resentment of hearing them too much or for being too detached from the reality, how they become confusing in practice, how they are replaced by the cooler one and even though the previous one tells the cooler one to be careful of the path, the cooler one just goes boldly into the marketplace convinced it will be different this time.

So I promise you this is the last time I write about composable. But I'm going to try and explain it from my perspective and from the perspective I find most interesting. Us. The People.

(The irony isn't lost on me that AI could have written that first paragraph about me. Back off AI, your irony is still immature. Watch out new term, it's rough out there).

Maybe every point in time can easily be described as a heightened combination of optimism and fear, but man, this one just seems different. Let's let the Internet continue its run at fear expertise and by considering the term composable in a different way, let's see what optimism we can eek out.

In this now-impossible-to-segment area of software I/we have found ourselves in, we've been touting composable and the very rational reasons for the strategy--software projects will always ride this Tilt-A-Whirl between smaller things and bigger things made up of smaller things, watch best in class services accumulate into platforms and platforms that degrade and need to deconstruct into component parts, from disparate features with various levels of discipline and support to one massive relationship where the companies involved bet on a certain number of future years of "guaranteed" mutual success.

While great companies take great advice from great software companies, there is, of course, never a discreet answer and only a matching to an individual situation, a need for an appreciation that these two ends of the spectrum exist for great reasons, a communication requirement around the nuance, and a carefully picked seat on the Tilt-A-Whirl, knowing it will continue to move.

OK, so back to Us. Information workers unite. It seems more powerful than ever to use this concept in the ways we could work together. Part of the driver for composable software choices is to more explicitly and consciously take ownership of the outcomes. To break down a massive software platform you've found historical value in and take ownership for understanding how to put it back together is a BIG deal. But to do it with purpose, to do it with the true knowledge for what it takes, to do it because that big platform and the company that represents it aren't unlocking the individual functions of value....those are maybe the reasons that indicate you're ready.

Companies today run the same risk as software platforms. Their walls have literally come down, their size isn't itself a differentiator, their history is only as good as their present attention to it, their consistent adhering to the most positive of historical themes and the purposeful evolving from the rest.

In this you now become your own microservice. Wow, there's a sea of similar microservices bobbing around here as those companies themselves try to become more composable, try to shed some functions, try to bet on some new ones. You have to clearly describe the value of your own operations and wrap them in a clean, accessible API so that others can readily benefit. You have to keep things maintained, up to date, bug free, advancing. You have to choose where to deploy and surround yourselves where detailed conversations suggest data flows that will drive brilliant insights.

I won't extend the metaphor to the headless thing. Don't try that. It will hurt and is likely irreversible. Unless the late, great Ted Williams takes one more crack at it and proves us wrong.

The obvious challenge to composable software projects is now, with these great individual microservices running around, it takes incredible orchestration smarts to manage the conversations between them. If all those microservices are simply shouting whatever's available to their outbound API method of 280 characters or less....well, we know what that sounds like.

So in addition to being your best microservice, you need to carefully craft your orchestration layer. I've written about the greatest conductor I've ever had and I hope you are lucky enough in your career to find something close. But search for it now. Maybe it's a classic leader, maybe it's someone on your team who just seems to get how to rally everyone towards a common goal. Maybe it is, in fact, you. The opportunity is greater than ever to assemble these teams quickly, do incredible work that is technology-fueled like never before (this is that new era, electricity, the Internet, this), disassemble and move to another project, repeat.

Platforms and companies provide a glue. That glue was/is sometimes a beneficial strengthening and sometimes a blocking barrier, and in reality always somewhere in between. Platforms and companies provide a central place to ask why things aren't working, a place to make suggestions around what could be globally added, one place to discuss the mutually available benefit that exists (and how to avoid mutually assured destruction). It is your time to define the next version of that layer, and your place in it.

Tilt-O-Whirl. Your seat. Composable.