(2026 AmA Keynote) Sociotechnical Architecture - Having your Agile and agility too.pdf

Agile has given us structures, roles, and methods to coordinate work — yet the more we scale it, the further we often drift from the very agility we seek. What will it take to have our Agile discipline and our agility too?

Sociotechnical architecture offers a lens for exploring this question. It invites us to become autopoietic designers in living systems. Through collaborative modeling, we can attend not only to technical quality attributes like modularity and scalability, but also to social ones like aliveness, connection, and wholeness.

What happens when the tidy ideals of technical design — decoupling and separation of concerns — meet the messy realities of human interdependence? How do we hold design conversations where independence and interdependence strengthen each other, where uncertainty becomes a possibility to appreciate rather than a problem to fix?

Today, technical architects and agile coaches often work apart — one shaping systems, the other shaping people. But what if their work could flow together? What if agile rituals became spaces where logic and ambiguity, predictability and emergence, the self and the whole could coalesce — where people feel seen, heard, and free to choose their agency rather than being delegated autonomy?

Perhaps sociotechnical architecture isn’t a new role, but a shared practice — a way of steering the boat while following the stream. Sometimes it means proposing an idea; other times, focusing attention, posing a question, and stepping back to let others shine. Together, we might rediscover agility not as a method to scale, but as a living quality to experience.

Transcript

1. 1 Sociotechnical Architecture Have your Agile and agility too Xin Yao @AmA, Berlin 2026
2. 2 You can be doing Agile without being agile
4. 4 Join me to explore What will it take to have our Agile discipline & our agility too? And could sociotechnical architecture help us get there?
5. Hi, I am Xin 👋
6. software product strategy agility Agile
8. AGENDA Agile Meets Architecture - Where? Sociotechnical Architecture A Sociotechnical Experiment Architecture in the Age of AI 1 2 3 4
9. Agile Meets Architecture - Where?
10. Agile Manifesto | Principle 11 The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. (2001)
11. • On a scale from 1-5, to what extent have you seen Principle 11 realized in practice? • If we focus on architecture alone, does your number go up or down? Why? 25 Years after the Agile Manifesto - Principle 11
12. How do we move a couch within a scaled Agile organization? Credit: Gene Kim & Steven Spear Wiring the Winning Organization (2024) 1 2
13. A true “move the couch” story involving 27 teams, deeply nested API call chains and event choreography
14. Agile/Scrum stifles my agency and squeezes me into the mold of an obedient, micromanaged factory worker…
15. Architecture is the shared understanding of the “important stuff”. Martin Fowler “Who needs an architect” (2003) “Architecture is a social construct”
16. An architect’s value is inversely proportional to the number of decisions he or she makes. Martin Fowler “Who needs an architect” (2003) What is an architect’s real leverage?
17. Architecture is a sociotechnical seesaw Upfront Architecture Hard-to-change decisions Emergent Architecture Self-organizing teams Architecture is a social construct Agile Agility Shared understanding of the important stuff
18. “Beyond Yagni - How to Agilely Architect an Agile Architecture” (Philippe Kruchten et. al, 2014) Architecture is not a natural byproduct of Agile The Zipper Model Deliberate Emergence
19. Sociotechnical Architecture (STA)
20. Sociotechnical mirroring?
21. Intention Reality The ‘runtime’ drift of Inverse Conway Architecture reflects culture far more reliably than culture obeys architecture.
22. Allopoiesis Autopoiesis Credit: Maturana & Varela “Autopoiesis & Cognition: The Realization of the Living” (1980)
23. Software organizations are open sociotechnical systems Social complexity subsumes technical complication.
24. Every piece of code carries traces of the conversations, compromises, constraints, and misunderstandings that shaped it. Technical debt is social debt
26. 26 If organizations reproduce themselves… does that mean nothing can change?
27. It’s the system. There is nothing I can do. It’s the manage- ment. We don’t have the right skills. Culture eats strategy for … They don’t care. The roles are unclear. That’s above my pay grade. It’s always been like this. Nothing’s gonna change. What are the stories you often hear in your org or team?
28. Do I want to be the cause, or the effect? Peter Block Community: The Structure of Belonging (2026) My part in the autopoiesis
29. Credit: Peter Block (“The Six Conversations”) Ownership Conversation: How have I contributed to creating or maintaining the current reality?
30. Quality attributes in sociotechnical architecture Connectedness Aliveness Belonging Freedom Wholeness Modularity Scalability Security Maintainability Reliability Social Architecture Technical Architecture Openness Recoverability
31. Connectedness Aliveness Belonging Freedom Wholeness Modularity Scalability Security Maintainability Reliability Social Architecture Technical Architecture Openness Recoverability Decouple Connect Opposing forces: decouple software & connect people Independence Interdependence
32. Organizational Intention Organizational Becoming Beliefs • Actions • Interactions • Learning Agile Agility Shared Understanding of the Important Stuff Decouple software, connect people Sociotechnical architecture: Intention vs. Becoming Credit: Robert Chia & Haridimos Tsoukas “On Organizational Becoming” (2014) Plans • Structure • Constraints
33. How do we architect organizational becoming? INTENTION (Centralized) BECOMING (Distributed) Alignment (Looks neat) Coherence (Looks alive)
34. A Sociotechnical Experiment A story in progress @ an insurance company Any similarity to real companies is purely coincidental.
35. DECISION FRAMING To what extent should FluxCare adopt an Agentic AI architecture to support its insurance claims workflow? What about AI-assisted software dev? SETTLEMENT Sociotechnical ADR workshops – Reimagine a future with AI
36. Making Great Emotional Architecture Decisions Experiment: Lead with emotion mapping Image credit: Principia Consulting
37. People, Moments, Emotions Claim is submitted Claim is assessed / inspected Claim is approved Claim is denied Claim is escalated Decision is challenged by customer Claim is settled Prompt: At [key moment], [role] could feel [emotion], because… Claire the Customer Carla the Claims Specialist Sam the Support Agent Evan the Engineer Oliver the Compliance Officer Dave the Damage Inspector People Moment Empowered Clarity In control Trustful Confidence Safety Relief Emotion Example: At the moment when a claim is denied, Sam, the customer support agent, feels helpless, because he can’t explain how the decision was made by multiple AI agents and systems. Anxious Confusion Helpless Distrust Worried Unsafe Embarrassed
38. Role → Moment → Emotion → Question → Arch. Characteristic [Arch. Question] How might we avoid putting Sam in a position where he feels helpless when ….? [Arch. Requirements] The system should be able to trace decisions across agents and systems. [Arch. Characteristic] Decision traceability / Explanability
39. Technical & Functional characteristics • Security & data privacy • Operational resilience • Observability • Fault tolerance • Transparency • Auditability • Explainability • Decision traceability • Human overrideability • Domain-aware agents Social & Org characteristics • Trustworthiness • Accountability • Psychological safety (for employees) • Role clarity • Ethical alignment • Customer empathy • Deskilling mitigation • Oversight and control • Adaptability • Learning Surprising discovery: most ‘ilities’ are sociotechnical
40. Emotions and questions as architecture material Architecture characteristics are compressed answers to human emotions at critical moments. Executive Leadership: “Let’s talk about how we feel about AI - no taboos, no judgment”.
41. Architecture in the Age of AI
42. [Systemic focus] Devs need a rich understanding of users Source: 2025 State of AI Assisted Software Development (DORA report) DORA: AI Capabilities Model
43. Solution Problem Diverge Diverge Converge Converge Need new collaboration patterns The Double Diamond becomes too linear for AI exploration
44. Deeper convergence and wider divergence How do we grow a spec language for non-deterministic LLMs? Solution Problem Diverge Converge Converge Possibility Space Problem Space Solution Space D iverge M ore C onverge M ore Converge
45. [CI + CD + CC] Continuous Comprehension of AI-assisted work Keep doing Start doing
46. Upfront Architecture Emergent Architecture AI amplifies the need for sociotechnical architecture Agile Agility Continuous Comprehension Organizational Intention Organizational Becoming Divergence Rigor Conversation, Collaboration Shared understanding of the important stuff Decouple software, connect people Convergence Rigor Specs, Tests, Ubiquitous Language
48. Key Points Agile Meets Architecture (AmA) • Complexity forces upfront architecture thinking. • Architecture is not just structure - it’s a social construct. • Architecture is not a natural byproduct of Agile. • We need deliberate emergence. Sociotechnical Architecture (STA) • Conway’s Law is a one-way street. • Technical debt is social debt. • We are the cause, not the effect (autopoiesis). • Architects decouple software, connect people. • Sociotechnical architecture balances intention and becoming. STA in the Age of AI - Continuous Comprehension (CC) • Continuous comprehension (CC) makes or breaks the promise of AI. • Divergence rigor and Convergence rigor. • Keep doing: Domain-Driven Design (DDD), Human-centered Design (HCD). • Start doing: Community Based Design (CBD).
49. 49 Sociotechnical Architecture Have your Agile and agility too Xin Yao @AmA, Berlin 2026 @settling-mud.bsky.social @xinyao@mathstodon.xyz https://www.linkedin.com/in/xinxin Thank you!