In a world of rapid changes and increasing uncertainties, organizations must continuously adapt and evolve to remain competitive and excel in the market. That requires organizations to design, build, and evolve adaptive, socio-technical systems that are optimized for a fast flow of change and constant feedback.

Architecture for Flow provides a holistic toolset to align business strategy, software design and architecture, and team organization to be amenable and optimized for anticipating and absorbing change and incorporating constant feedback.

Architecture for Flow builds up on patterns, principles, and practices from Wardley Mapping, Domain-Driven Design (DDD), and Team Topologies: From mapping and understanding the competitive landscape to anticipating change with Wardley Mapping, to categorizing the problem space and modularizing the solution space with DDD, and finally to organizing teams and aligning their interactions for a fast flow of change and constant feedback with Team Topologies.

How these perspectives complement one another to enable adaptive, socio-technical systems is detailed in the book “Architecture for Flow” (Addison-Wesley Signature Series, 2025). However, this approach should not be considered as a set of strict rules or as a rigid framework. Architecture for Flow does not claim to be complete nor intended to be exclusive. Instead, it should be seen as complementary to various other techniques.

In addition, the Architecture for Flow Canvas outlines a structured way to optimize a system for flow by combining Wardley Mapping, DDD, and Team Topologies into a single, cohesive view.