Scale, Flow and Microservices

on YouTube ↗37m

" summary

Argues that scaling follows measurable power laws: mammal metabolism ~0.75 exponent, company revenue ~0.85 exponent, while Amazon/AWS shows 1.15 superlinear growth (revenue vs employees). Explains causes: space‑filling fractal hierarchies, invariant terminating units (people/cells), and optimization via feedback, and warns hierarchies cause backpressure and slower corporate metabolism and ~10.5 year stock‑market half‑life. Recommends decoupled teams and services, two‑pizza / small‑world networks, and tracking lead time, MTTR, change‑failure and deploy frequency.

AI-written summary · about

" chapters (15)

1. 0:00Intro
2. 8:29What do mice and elephants have in common?
3. 10:18What do Newsagents and Walmart have in common?
4. 11:13What do Hamburg and Leipzig have in common?
5. 15:11Complex adaptive systems
6. 16:153 simple principles
7. 18:07Complex adaptive systems are everywhere
8. 19:14The most famous scaling law
9. 21:50Corporate metabolism
10. 22:18Why do metabolic rates slow as size increases?
11. 27:20Flow of work in organizations
12. 29:05Identifying the signs of ageing
13. 30:37Corporate mortality
14. 31:41The alchemist's stone
15. 35:43Outro

" related talks

• 42mScale, Flow and MicroservicesJames Lewis · GOTOpia Chicago 2021
• 48mScale, Microservices and FlowJames Lewis · Build Stuff 2019
• 44mFlow, microservices and scale｜James Lewis · Øredev 2019
• 49mSoftware Architecture, Team Topologies & Complexity ScienceJames Lewis · YOW! Melbourne 2022
• 53mKeynote - Software Architecture, Team Topologies and Complexity ScienceJames Lewis · NDC Porto 2022
• 39mTeam Topologies, Software Architecture & ComplexityJames Lewis · GOTO Amsterdam 2022
• 01h 01mSoftware Architecture, Team Topologies & Complexity ScienceJames Lewis · YOW! 2021
• 58mScaling like a Silicon Valley startupJanet Bumpas · Agile on the Beach 2024