Atomic Systems / Artifacts (Simple Scalable Systems)

TL;DR - Atomic Systems / Artifacts do one thing well. Atomic. Impactful. Compounding - over time, usage, and usecases. Simple Scalable Systems is the mnemonic.

Overview

Atomic Systems / Artifacts are:

• Atomic (Simple) - Do one thing well. Simple, Practical, Complete, Composable.
• Impactful (Systemic) - Solve purpose thoroughly and systematically. Effective, Robust, Efficient, Measurable.
• Compounding (Scalable) - Scales vertically (up + down), horizontally, and sideways over time, usage, and usecases. Durable, Scalable, Sustainable, Evolvable.

I like the mnemonic Simple Scalable Systems which roughly maps to these attributes.

By focusing on atomic artifacts, we unlock a compounding library of tools we can deploy, combine, evolve, and redeploy to achieve greater impact - solving increasing numbers, magnitude, and shapes of problems.

To implement these I like to ask a few questions about any project / plan / implementation I'm working on:

• Is this atomic?
• Is this impactful?
• Is this compounding?

Atomic Artifact Examples

Atomic Artifacts can take any form - physical objects, concepts, implemented systems, written processes, etc.

• Software - Atomic tools and systems. Well defined functions, libraries, apps all fall into this category. Each does its job well and can be composed together to build systems of increasing capability while keeping complexity manageable.
• Writing - Atomic essays. Self-contained essays on one particular subject. Links out to other such essays for additional context. Each essay is an atom, together they represent knowledge.

Related Ideas

• Composability is the best proxy for well-structured software. If it's composable, it's flexible, easy to test, and likely easy to understand. This doesn't supercede impact validation (does this do what it is supposed to do in prod) but it is a good proxy for whether your design will stand the test of time.

SECTION

Todos

• Tighten up the language of atomic, effective, efficient vs simple scalable systems.
• Likely need a sectoin or page on atomic systems and simple scalable systems to link to