MichaelCarducci

Modernizing legacy systems is often seen as a daunting task, with many teams falling into the trap of rigid rewrites or expensive overhauls that disrupt the business. The Tailor-Made Architecture Model (TMAM) offers a new approach—one that is centered on incremental evolution through design-by-constraint. By using TMAM, architects can guide legacy systems through a flexible, structured modernization process that minimizes risk and aligns with both technical and organizational needs.

Architectural decisions are often influenced by blindspots, biases, and unchecked assumptions, which can lead to significant long-term challenges in system design. In this session, we’ll explore how these cognitive traps affect decision-making, leading to architectural blunders that could have been avoided with a more critical, holistic approach.

Since ChatGPT rocketed the potential of generative AI into the collective consciousness there has been a race to add AI to _everything_. Every product owner has been salivating at the possibility of new AIPowered features. Every marketing department is chomping at the bit to add a "powered by AI" sticker to the website. For the average layperson playing with ChatGPT's conversational interface, it seems easy however integrating these tools securely, reliably, and in a costeffective manner requires much more than simply adding a chat interface. Moreover, getting consistent results from a chat interface is more than an art than a science. Ultimately, the chat interface is a nice gimmick to show off capabilities, but serious integration of these tools into most applications requires a more thoughtful approach.

Since ChatGPT rocketed the potential of generative AI into the collective consciousness there has been a race to add AI to _everything_. Every product owner has been salivating at the possibility of new AIPowered features. Every marketing department is chomping at the bit to add a "powered by AI" sticker to the website. For the average layperson playing with ChatGPT's conversational interface, it seems easy however integrating these tools securely, reliably, and in a costeffective manner requires much more than simply adding a chat interface. Moreover, getting consistent results from a chat interface is more than an art than a science. Ultimately, the chat interface is a nice gimmick to show off capabilities, but serious integration of these tools into most applications requires a more thoughtful approach.

The age of hypermedia-driven APIs is finally upon us, and it’s unlocking a radical new future for AI agents. By combining the power of the Hydra linked-data vocabulary with semantic payloads, APIs can become fully self-describing and consumable by intelligent agents, paving the way for a new class of autonomous systems. In this session, we’ll explore how mature REST APIs (level 3) open up groundbreaking possibilities for agentic systems, where AI agents can perform complex tasks without human intervention.

REST APIs often fall into a cycle of constant refactoring and rewrites, leading to wasted time, technical debt, and endless rework. This is especially difficult when you don't control the API clients. But what if this could be your last major API refactor? In this session, we’ll dive into strategies for designing and refactoring REST APIs with long-term sustainability in mind—ensuring that your next refactor sets you up for the future.

Statistically speaking, you are most probably an innovator. Innovators actively seek out new ideas, technologies, and mental models by reading books, interacting with a broader social circle, and *attending conferences.* While you may leave this conference with the seed of an idea that has the potential to transform your teams, products, and organization; the battle has only begun. While, as a potential changeagent, you are ideally positioned to conceive of the powerful new ideas, you may be powerless to drive the change that leads to adoption. Your success requires the innovation to *diffuse* outward and become adopted. This is the _art_ of Innovation.

Agile has become an overused and overloaded buzzword, let's go back to first principles. Agile is the 12 principles. Agile is founded on fast feedback and embraces change. Agile is about making the right decisions at the right time while constantly learning and growing. Architecture, on the other hand, seems to be the opposite. Once famously described by Grady Booch as "the stuff that's hard to change" there is overwhelming pressure to get architecture "right" early on as the ultimate necessary rework will be costly at best, and fatal at worst. But too much complexity, too early, can be just as costly or fatal. A truly practical approach to agile architecture is long overdue.

Integration, once a luxury, is now a necessity. Doing this well, however, continues to be elusive. Early attempts to build better distributed systems such as DCOM, CORBA, and SOAP were widely regarded as failures. Today the focus is on REST, RPC, and graphql style APIs. Which is best? The goto answer for architects is, of course, "it depends."

“Humans became behaviourally modern the moment they committed to **storing abstract information outside their brains.**” —Lyn Wadley As architects, we often bridge the gaps that exist between all of the teams and stakeholders involved in the success or failure of a system. Because of this, information is hitting us from every direction. How we capture, organize, distill, and express this information is critical to our own success or failure.

The difference between a junior and a senior dev isn't coding skills. A developer's coding skills are just their ante; necessary to get into the game but, like an ante, they only get you into the game.

Microservices architecture has become a buzzword in the tech industry, promising unparalleled agility, scalability, and resilience. Yet, according to Gartner, more than 90% of organizations attempting to adopt microservices will fail. How can you ensure you're part of the successful 10%?

Microservices has emerged as both a popular and powerful architecture, yet the promised benefits overwhelmingly fail to materialize. Industry analyst, Gartner, estimates that "More than 90% of organizations who try to adopt microservices will fail..." If you hope to be part of that successful 10%, read on...

Architecture is often described as "the stuff that's hard to change" or "the important stuff (whatever that is)." At its core, architecture defines the very essence of software, transcending mere features and functions to encompass vital capabilities such as scalability, evolvability, elasticity, and reliability. But here's the real question: where do these critical capabilities truly originate? In this keynote, we'll embark on a journey to uncover the secrets behind successful architectures. While popular architecture patterns may offer a starting point, it's time to unveil the startling truth – both monolith and microservicesbased projects continue to stumble and falter at alarming rates. The key to unparalleled success lies in the art of finetuning and tailormaking architectures to precisely fit the unique needs of your organization, environment, and the teams delivering the software.