Welcome to Mentrix
Systems architecture skills for an increasingly complex world.
Domain Drive Design Europe
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NewCrafts Paris
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Codecamp_Festival
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Global Software Architecture Summit
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Software Architecture Gathering
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Beyond Coding
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Add Dot Podcast
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Virtual DDD
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O'Reilly Platform
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Techie Leadership
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Agile Meets Architecture
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goto;
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Jax
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DDD Academy
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Domain Drive Design Europe • NewCrafts Paris • Codecamp_Festival • Global Software Architecture Summit • Software Architecture Gathering • Beyond Coding • Add Dot Podcast • Virtual DDD • O'Reilly Platform • Techie Leadership • Agile Meets Architecture • goto; • Jax • DDD Academy •
Coming in print: August 2024
The critical skillset for modern knowledge workers.
Recent Talks
We don’t (just) architect software … we design knowledge systems.
Innovative Strategies for Modern Systems
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The Economist
A create once, publish everywhere information system to replace legacy print and digital software.
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The Wikimedia Foundation
A system to share knowledge with nearly-infinite people, products and platforms.
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Launching Soon!
A novel, greenfield platform integrating real-time, multi-source user interactions and events.
Systems thinking is becoming a core and critical skill. The Iceberg Mode helps us understand "the rationality that produced" our current situation. As a software professional, you can use it whenever you want to understand the root cause of a system challenge.
Systems experts have taught us how to improve our software systems:
Peter Senge has demonstrated that we blame the wrong things (events, situations or processes) for our systemic problems.
W. Edwards Deming says that 94% of the time, the system is to blame for performance issues, not the individual parts of the system.
Jay Forrester discovered counterintuitiveness: most organizations “fix” systemic problems by inadvertently making them worse.
Donella Meadows said, “We'll go down in history as the first society that wouldn't save itself because it wasn't cost-effective.”
As relational complexity increases, we need to think in systems. I don't just mean adopt Kubernetes. Technology systems are always, also, people systems. Without systems thinking, nothing is transformed. As Robert Pirsig said,
"If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory."
Systems thinking is becoming a core and critical skill. The Iceberg Model, for example, helps us understand "the rationality that produced" our current situation. As a software professional, you can use itwhenever you want to understand the root cause of a system challenge.
Using tools like the iceberg model is deceptively simple. Avoiding the iceberg ... takes committed practice.