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Architecture Under Pressure: Would You Ship It?

Event artwork for Architecture Under Pressure: Would You Ship It?
About this event

What to expect

Test your software architecture instincts in a fast-moving team challenge at Manchester’s Bonded Warehouse on Thursday 15 October 2026, from 6–8pm BST.

Software architecture often looks straightforward when requirements stay fixed, but real systems rarely enjoy that luxury. Organised by Software Crafters Manchester, this practical, interactive session explores how engineering decisions change as business needs, technical limitations and operational pressures collide.

The architecture challenge

Nick Choudhry, Senior Software Craftsperson at Codurance, will split attendees into small teams. Every team starts with the same fictional scenario: a fast-growing platform company facing scaling problems, unreliable search, slow deployments and mounting pressure from the business.

Your task is to redesign its architecture. The catch? A new constraint arrives every 10 minutes. Teams will need to respond as:

  • Traffic grows and availability requirements change
  • Product teams demand the ability to deploy independently
  • Infrastructure costs become capped
  • A legacy database is declared untouchable for another 12 months

There is no single “perfect” answer. Instead, the exercise is designed to reveal how engineers balance scalability, reliability, cost, team autonomy and technical debt when every option involves trade-offs.

Debate your decisions

After the redesign exercise, each team will explain what it changed, what it deliberately left alone, which compromises it accepted and where the greatest risks remain. Some of the more controversial decisions will then be put on trial: one attendee will argue in favour, another will argue against, and the room will decide, would you actually ship it?

Expect a highly participatory format built around small-group problem-solving, architecture discussion and friendly debate rather than a conventional presentation. Different teams may reach very different conclusions from the same starting point, making the comparison of approaches a central part of the session.

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Create With Conference · Brighton

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600+ builders, honest implementation stories and hands-on workshops, once a year. The next edition is being planned.

The main stage at Create With 2026 with a full room
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A panel on the main stage

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