This standard ensures systems are integrated through stable, loosely coupled interfaces—enabling teams to evolve domains independently without breaking changes. It supports resilience, modularity, and flexibility at scale.
Aligned to our "Architect for Change" policy, this standard reduces integration risk, improves maintainability, and strengthens autonomy. Without it, changes ripple unpredictably across domains, slowing delivery and increasing system fragility.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | Teams work independently but introduce implicit dependencies without coordination. |
| Process & Governance | Integrations are informal or undocumented. Interface changes are rarely communicated. |
| Technology & Tools | Point-to-point APIs or database sharing is common. There is no boundary enforcement. |
| Measurement & Metrics | Breakages occur regularly but are not tracked or tied to integration maturity. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | Teams begin recognising the need for stable interfaces and communicate changes manually. |
| Process & Governance | Some API documentation exists, and teams coordinate breaking changes through meetings. |
| Technology & Tools | Shared tools like Postman or Swagger emerge, but adoption is uneven across domains. |
| Measurement & Metrics | Backward compatibility issues are identified through incident post-mortems. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | Domain boundaries are respected, and interface ownership is clear and documented. |
| Process & Governance | Contract-first design, semantic versioning, and backward compatibility policies are standard practice. |
| Technology & Tools | API gateways or schema registries enforce contract expectations across teams. |
| Measurement & Metrics | Metrics around coupling, latency, and breaking changes are actively reviewed. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | Engineers proactively analyse usage patterns and coordinate across domain boundaries. |
| Process & Governance | Governance mechanisms exist to detect risky changes before they reach production. |
| Technology & Tools | Tooling tracks integration health and triggers alerts on contract violations or regressions. |
| Measurement & Metrics | Service dependency health is visible, measured, and reviewed in architectural forums. |
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| People & Culture | Teams adapt interface evolution strategies based on consumer feedback and change velocity. |
| Process & Governance | Loose coupling is built into system architecture. Interfaces evolve through versioning and governance boards. |
| Technology & Tools | Runtime contract validation and consumer-driven testing are integrated into delivery pipelines. |
| Measurement & Metrics | Teams continuously track integration friction, delivery speed, and change safety. |