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Allen (2023) Minimum Viable Architecture

Bibliographic Entry

Musings of a Trust Architect: Minimum Viable Architecture, 2023, [blog post], Christopher Allen, Blockchain Commons. Retrieved from https://www.blockchaincommons.com/musings/musings-mva/

Summary

The minimum viable architecture principle argues that early architectural decisions should focus on the few choices that are hard to reverse later — the load-bearing decisions that shape everything downstream. Defer tactical decisions until you have more information. The 80/20 rule applies: a small number of early commitments determine the system’s trajectory, and getting those wrong is expensive. Getting tactical details wrong is cheap and correctable.

Key Points

Hard-to-reverse vs easy-to-change. The distinction is not between “important” and “unimportant” decisions, but between decisions that are expensive to reverse and those that are cheap to change. Focus early energy on the former.

Defer tactical decisions. When you do not yet know enough to make a decision well, and the decision is easy to change later, wait. Premature commitment to tactical choices creates unnecessary constraints.

80/20 for architecture. A small number of load-bearing decisions — data model, trust model, identity model, protocol boundaries — determine 80% of the system’s character. Everything else is implementation detail.

Influence

Directly relevant to Inter-Face Protocol’s architectural choices. IFP’s load-bearing decisions (gossip-as-filter, temperature model, agent-age principles, human legibility, progressive trust) are the minimum viable architecture. Many of IFP’s tactical decisions (specific field names, rate limits, endpoint paths) could change without reshaping the protocol.

Sources

• https://www.blockchaincommons.com/musings/musings-mva/

Relations

• relates_to::[[Granularity of Progressive Authentication Stages]]
  • Are the four authentication levels a load-bearing architectural decision or a tactical choice that could be refined?
• relates_to::[[Disclosure Spectrum as Discrete Tiers or Continuous Range]]
  • Are the six disclosure tier names a minimum viable architecture decision or a deferrable tactical choice?
• relates_to::[[Social Phase Decomposition in Trust-Building Protocols]]
  • Are the six conversation phases load-bearing architecture or tactical decomposition?
• relates_to::[[Clarity Over Tolerance in Agent-Age Protocols]]
  • Replacing Postel’s Law is a hard-to-reverse architectural decision — exactly the kind minimum viable architecture says to make early.
• relates_to::[[When to Specify and When to Explore in Protocol Evolution]]
  • The central application of minimum viable architecture to IFP: which decisions deserve specification commitment and which should remain open for implementation discovery?

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