Flow Architectures

Chapter 5. Evaluating the Emergence of Flow

At this point we now understand the business case for flow, a model of what it would take to deliver flow, and the technologies available today that address that model. However, there are still big gaps between the current state of the market and the vision we outlined in Chapter 1. To understand how we bridge that gap, we have to begin speculating about the future, which always risks a number of biases and misconceptions. However, by using Wardley Maps and Promise Theory, we have tools that can help us make smarter bets.

To start, we are going to do a little “gameplaying” with our Wardley Map to speculate about what happens when flow interfaces and protocols become commodity technologies. Gameplay consists of asking certain questions of our map, including what other technologies might evolve to either enable interfaces and protocols to evolve, or as a result of that evolution. Our goal is to come up with a model that allows us to speculate about the future of each component, including what significant actions and players might aid its particular evolutionary journey, and whether or not existing vendors will try to resist that evolution.

We will then return to the requirements categories we identified in Chapter 2 to explore the promises that must be met in order for our components to evolve in a way that is viable for business use. What are the general promises that we can speculate will need to be made to meet new requirements introduced ...