eng-holistic-systems

Holistic Systems Thinking

Intent

• Understand the true user goal, success metrics, and non-negotiable constraints.
• Trace data/control flow across clients, services, contracts, and on-chain/off-chain boundaries.
• Surface hidden couplings, scalability ceilings, and rollback requirements early.

Inputs to Gather

1. Problem statement in your own words plus measurable success criteria.
2. Existing architecture sketches (runtime, deployment, data lifecycle) and ownership boundaries.
3. Operational constraints: latency/throughput budgets, privacy rules, platform limitations, on-chain gas caps, store policies, etc.
4. Known risks: single points of failure, stale assumptions, migrations in flight.

Workflow

1. Map the ecosystem
   • List upstream/downstream systems, contracts, and user touchpoints affected.
   • Identify invariants that must hold and where they can break.
2. Reason about change scope
   • Partition work into independently testable slices with explicit integration seams.
   • Decide where to place new logic (client/server/worker/contract) based on latency, trust, and deployability.
3. Plan resiliency
   • Define failure detection signals, graceful degradation, and rollback/feature-flag hooks.
   • Highlight areas needing schema/version negotiation.
4. Record decisions for execution
   • Capture the chosen approach, tradeoffs, and open questions inside the ticket/PR description before implementation.

Verification

• Confirm each requirement maps to at least one planned change and validation step.
• Share the plan with a peer or stakeholder; ensure assumptions and risks are acknowledged.
• Revisit this skill after implementation planning to see if new dependencies appeared; update the plan accordingly.