We’re working on our Architecture Principles

I’m part of the architecture community of colleagues across the Co-op who set technology direction. We’re responsible for overseeing the design and build of new services for our colleagues, members and customers. Just before Christmas we started thinking about how to renew the Architecture Principles that govern how we make technology choices and how we work.

Times are changing

Our existing principles have served us well over the years but technology is changing quickly. It’s important our principles take the pace of change into account so they can help our colleagues make good technology decisions that reflect our ethical leadership too.

We’ve formed a team from across the Co-op Group that includes colleagues from Retail, Consumer Services and Digital. Together we’ll create and then iterate the principles. We’re using Co-op values and principles as our starting point. These values and principles such as democracy, equity and equality are the fundamentals of ‘being Co-op’, and will help us to focus on how we do things, as well as what we do.

Testing with colleagues

We’ll create a pilot group of colleagues who’ll test the principles we create and feed back on how clear, simple and usable they are in practice.

One of our guiding thoughts on this work is that we need to be radically open and transparent, and we’re starting with this blog post. We’ll share our progress and publish the principles in alpha during the spring.

Michael Paulson
Chief Technology Officer