Main CTO Day 2024

Sharing experiences and building a community within the software industry play a central role in Main's corporate philosophy on Value Creation. The Main CTO Day is an example of this, and the fact that we are organizing this event for the 11th time underlines the institutionalized nature of this meeting.

The Main CTO Day 2024 took place at the Van der Valk in Utrecht and was organized for a select audience of CTOs and lead developers from our portfolio companies. This year’s theme, Software Architecture Design, provided interesting discussions and valuable key takeaways. During the event, participants had the opportunity to exchange ideas on the topic and network with like-minded professionals from the enterprise software industry.

The key-takeaways

Customized architectures for agility and success

Krishnan Subramanian from Microsoft opened the event with his keynote on “Software Architectures: Myth vs. Reality”, in which he emphasized that there are no universal best practices for system architectures. Instead, each architecture must be tailored to the specific needs of the company.

Agility is crucial to remain adaptable in a rapidly changing environment: “Every company is unique and its IT architecture must reflect this uniqueness, with agility at the forefront to meet changing requirements.”

Aligning structure and architecture:

Building on this theme, Stephen Walters from GitLab discussed how organizational structure should be aligned with system architecture and introduced the Inverse Conway Maneuver.He emphasized the importance of continuously optimizing value creation processes to prevent “application architecture drift”: “The architecture you want should determine the structure of your teams and ensure that the structure of your organization supports and enhances your system architecture.”

The importance of communication in change management:

Henry Arousell of Bjorn Lunden emphasized that successful change management relies heavily on clear communication at all levels of the organization. His team’s philosophy is that words matter when aligning teams during transition phases: “At Bjorn Lunden, we make sure that every change, no matter how big or small, is clearly communicated at every level of abstraction.”

Building strong software architectures with core functions and decentralized teams:

During a panel discussion, Elin Kröger Nygren from Aunetic addressed the importance of identifying the core functions of a product early on and removing elements with little benefit.She emphasized the need for decentralized development teams united by a common set of principles and culture: “Focusing on the core product and eliminating unnecessary features encourages reuse and consolidation, while decentralized teams enable agility and innovation.”

Massimo Capoccia added to this by highlighting the benefit of a platform-centric approach that ensures smooth integration throughout the development cycle.

Clear strategy and leadership support for success:

Declan Morris concluded the discussion by emphasizing the importance of a clear strategy and leadership support for system architecture success. Otherwise, organizations run the risk of falling into outdated patterns: “Without a clearly defined strategy and executive support, organizations can become trapped in outdated practices that lead to chaos, silos and technical debt.

The insights gained from Main CTO Day 2024 show how important adaptability, strategic alignment and communication are for building successful, scalable software architectures.