Featuring: Dave Kibble (DWP), Rob Smith (Atom Bank) & James Drew (Growth Capital Ventures)
Leighton’s recent on:tech event explored examples of organisations that have successfully implemented event-driven architecture (EDA) to improve the scalability, flexibility and reliability of business applications.
Steve Morland, Specialist Tech Lead at Leighton moderated the conversation whilst Dave Kibble, Lead Integration Domain Architect for DWP, Rob Smith, Principal Solutions Architect at Atom Bank and James Drew, CTO of Growth Capital Ventures, formed the panel to discuss the challenges faced, lessons learned and benefits of using EDA.
First things first, what is EDA?
A design pattern used in software and system architecture, EDA focuses on the flow of information and actions in a system, driven by events. Events are significant occurrences or notifications that can trigger parts of a system to respond or take action. Events can be generated by user interactions, changes in data, or external factors. Systems can react to events as they occur, promoting flexibility, scalability, and decoupling of system components, making it easier to build complex and responsive software systems.
Why would businesses want to adopt EDA?
As Rob explained: “EDA is a great answer to that point of crippling complexity that a lot of companies get to with their systems. They either get to a point where it’s difficult to scale or it’s difficult to add features and functionality to their systems. The result is usually things failing, things slowing down or customer experience getting poor.”
“Another great benefit of the event model is where you need to distribute information widely, where you may have multiple actors needing to take some action on an event” for example, multiple departments or business units, added Dave.
From James’ perspective, the decision to adopt EDA is based on flexibility: “I tend to work in the start-up and scale-up space, so our decision to adopt EDA is about the ability to react to change in a dynamic way, and not be stuck with some of the decisions we’ve made early.”
Monoliths versus microservices: when is the right time to adopt EDA?
A monolith refers to a ‘traditional’ software application or system that is built as a single, tightly integrated unit, whereas microservices architecture decomposes a system into smaller, independent services. Microservices and EDA are complementary architectural patterns that can work together to build scalable, flexible systems. So, when is the right time for a business to adopt EDA?
“Starting out with a monolith, even though it’s not sexy, is probably in most cases, the right place to start” says James. “The structure of your organisation will directly impact the structure of the software you build” he added.
“In a much larger organisation, you’re able to use separate systems and communicate between them using events, but when you’re a start-up with a small team of developers you may not have that luxury” said James.
Rob added: “We know when we need to move to a bigger building or take on more customer service people to deal with an increased number of customers, right? It’s an easy conversation to have. But it’s difficult to make that judgement of when you need to fundamentally change the architecture to support customers.”
How do you get your business bought into EDA and make it successful?
Ensuring technical and operational teams are joined up when it comes to the architectural approach is important. As Dave explains: “You need to get the business to understand and buy into what you’re trying to do and the process you’re trying to improve.”
“Getting the business to think outside of a linear business process is important. You need to help the business identify what the key steps are in any process and how EDA can help” he added.
Rob expanded: “I think getting your subject matter experts bought in and involved is key. These are the people who know best what constitutes an event, the people who are working close to customers and who are getting feedback from them. They’ll know which events are notable, not only for the customer, but also for the business”.
“Be clear about what problem you’re trying to solve. Don’t think of it as a technology shift, it is more a conceptual shift of how your business is going to work. Figure out what problem you’re going to solve and how that will improve your business” added Dave.
Businesses can leverage EDA to overcome complexities that hinder growth, enhance scalability, improve customer experiences, or adapt dynamically to change. To succeed, businesses must ensure technical and operational teams are aligned, embrace a conceptual shift towards event-driven thinking, and pinpoint the specific problems EDA can solve.
Are you an IT or tech leader interested in attending the next on:tech event? Register your interest at ontech@leighton.co