Rewilding Software Engineering, Simon Wardley, Girba Tudor, 2025

In Rewilding Software Engineering, Simon Wardley and Girba Tudor explore software engineering as a decision-making process about systems that are too large for us to fully grasp. The book introduces “holdable development”: constantly create new micro tools synthesizing new information which we then codify into our model of the system. Software engineering can be seen as primarily a decision-making activity about continuously changing systems.

Top 3 Learnings:

1. Software engineering as a decision-making process about systems too large to fully grasp. Holdable development: constantly create new micro tools synthesizing new information which we then codify into our model of the system. Visualization: represent inputs and outputs of various systems, used/not used/later. Software engineering can be seen as primarily a decision-making activity about continuously changing systems.

2. For decision-making, an answer has to be accurate, explainable, and representative, and a question has to be actionable, specific, and timely. Ask yourself questions with dependencies (genesis). Then build the answers with commodity tools. The “industrialization” of answers enables new questions.

3. Modernize software and product orgs for interdisciplinary work. The book positions software engineering as interdisciplinary decision-making about complex, continuously changing systems, requiring new approaches to development and organization.

Why and when to read it:

Read this when you’re thinking about how to organize software engineering work or want to understand software engineering as a decision-making discipline. It’s especially valuable for engineering leaders, architects, or anyone interested in new approaches to software development. The book provides a conceptual framework for understanding software engineering as decision-making about complex systems, making it perfect for teams wanting to improve how they make decisions about software systems.