XConf 2022

In this talk, Nimisha and Scott explore Tim Berners-Lee’s new vision for the Web – Solid and Pods – where user data is “at the beck and call of the users themselves… a future in which [web] programs work for you”. This is an alternative path where privacy and resiliency are at the heart of our system architectures. A path where the web’s pendulum swings back to decentralization. A path that leads to a fundamentally user-centric tech ecosystem.

Architecture CoE at AvidXchange embarked on a new initiative to improve architecture practices. As part of this initiative, they wanted to improve how to define, implement and validate CFRs. At AvidXchange, there is a recognition that a lack of consistent focus on CFR can cause a lack of usability and efficacy of the entire system leading to customer satisfaction issues. In this session, we will cover the following:

1. What is CFR?

2. Categories of CFR

3. CFRs in product development lifecycle

4. Example of NFR elicitation questions

As a technical leader on a project, are we supposed to know everything about everything? Does it matter if we do or don't? This talk explores how to develop a mindset of being comfortable with not knowing, and how we can still have healthy, strong and performant technical teams.

Learning the ins and outs of a service mesh can be daunting. However, as an engineer it can be extremely beneficial so that you are able to include more interesting automated tests around resiliency in your pipeline.

Both API Gateways and Service Meshes offer similar features and capabilities but are each implemented on a different axis in your application’s data plane. Draw those capabilities in a Venn diagram, you’ll see a lot of overlap between the API Gateways and Service Meshes. This is NOT a talk about the overlap. This is a talk about the things outside the overlap and why they matter (#HereBeDragons). The talk focuses on three questions around North/South & East/West Traffic. This talk is for a senior developer/architect on where to best inject cross-cutting concerns around security, observability and resiliency enabled by API Gateways and Service Meshes.

More and more web applications are moving towards a single page application model. Because a lot of the logic is in the frontend, we are starting to apply the backend microservices architecture to the frontend, calling it micro-frontends. But what does that look like in practice? This approach will definitely help organize the different parts of the web applications and allow software teams to mostly be independent of each other while they work on different parts of the site. However, can you truly decouple all modules? And how do you manage their dependencies? In this talk we will discuss an example of what a micro-frontend architecture looks like, its benefits and pitfalls. With this information, you can start to look at how you would structure your web application with micro-frontends.

Ever wonder how XR worlds are built? Come see how one beginner with no formal XR background created her own AR app and VR world. In less than 15 minutes you'll learn some tips and tricks and see what’s behind the scenes in XR world building.

In addition to being popular, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is rife with public misconceptions. During this talk, some of those misconceptions are dispelled with objective facts. From this talk, the key takeaways will be to gain a better understanding of DLT, the relationship between DLT, distributed databases, and blockchain, the different flavors of DLT, the many ways in which consensus can be reached in DLT, the relevance of a ledger for centralized databases and the landscape of DLT. 

Many infrastructure teams and the tools they create exist in a vacuum. What would happen if these tools were built with product thinking instead? In this talk we explore how using that concept can help you get there.

Traditional software development lifecycle has taught us to perform modeling and design activities upfront and think about deployment much later. With emergence of Serverless, physical/deployment architecture seem to have a lot more influence in how we model and design our solution. How does this inform our approach to Domain Driven Design’s (DDD's) strategical and tactical design process?

The Technology Radar is a technical piece of thought leadership for many but it’s also in many ways a snapshot into Thoughtworks culture; at its core the Radar is a knowledge management solution by Thoughtworkers, for Thoughtworkers. If you look closely the Radar provides a preview of some differentiated biases — for example, the idea that there is no such thing as a silver bullet, a preference in choosing open source software when available, and the culture of experimentation and sharing mistakes. This talk will explore some of these biases and how the Radar embodies them.

SustainChain™ is a platform to link businesses, investors, and inventors together to solve world issues outlined by the UN in their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Necessary to tackle the biggest challenges facing our planet, it is imperative that SustainChain be a public utility. But what does it mean to create a public utility, especially in the 21st century? In this talk, we will dive into the unique challenges that have come with this very question that has brought us to where we are and is pushing us to where we are going.

As we identify more and more organizations experiencing hyper growth we see a number of software architecture patterns and anti-patterns that can both enable scalability and performance or decrease productivity. In this talk, we will discuss the techniques to identify areas for enacting prudent technical debt, and software architectures that have been used to help digital scale-ups achieve growth.

Product discovery, on even the most technical products, is critical in achieving desired business outcomes. But what happens when the discovery was a failure, or worse, if the discovery didn't happen at all? This talk unveils key elements of a successful technical product discovery. Learn how a successful discovery impacts development, product delivery, business value and team morale. Britni details the unique perspective of technical product managers and how the discipline works beside engineers and developers to deliver high performing products.

FinOps is an evolving data-driven cloud financial management discipline and cultural practice that enables organizations to get maximum business value by helping technology, finance and business teams to collaborate on data-driven spending decisions. The open source project, Cloud Carbon Footprint, developed at Thoughtworks, estimates greenhouse gas emissions caused by the use of cloud-based systems. GreenOps is also a data-driven discipline and cultural practice that enables optimization of the cloud for carbon intensity. When we combine FinOps and GreenOps we have the Sustainable Cloud.