As software designers and engineers, our primary focus often gravitates towards the technical aspects when crafting solutions. We align these solutions with stakeholder needs using well-established design patterns, drawing inspiration from industry "best" practices and current trends. While we often consider organisational constraints like business capability maps, domain architectures, and organisational structures, there's an intricate web of power dynamics within organisations that often remains unaddressed. This spectrum ranges from biases in action or planning, the tension between centralised and decentralised decision-making, to the deeply rooted culture of “that won't work here”. Overlooking these dynamics can be a recipe for brittle software architectures, unable to withstand the complexities of these organisational power dynamics.

In this session, we will delve deep into how you can design software architecture to be antifragile against the complexities of organisational power dynamics and culture guided by Barry M. O'Reilly's residuality theory. This innovative approach to software architecture uses the concept of "stressors", unforeseen events that challenge system stability. Recognising the diverse nature of these stressors is pivotal to architecting software with resilient and antifragile behaviour. By weaving in organisational dynamics and culture as stressors, we lay the foundation for a more resilient software design. We will explore how to pinpoint these stressors by observing cultural symbols and understanding fractal social behaviours. I'll further illustrate the significance of using the symbols and fractals as stressors through a real-world case study. Attendees will depart with practical insights, ready to include the social dynamics into their next software design, enhancing its resilience against the complexities of organisational power dynamics.