Abstract: The Waffle House Software Architecture

Most restaurants work by someone taking your order and the request going via computers to the ‘back-end kitchen’ where your order is assembled by cooks.

In contrast, the kitchen at the Waffle House never sees your order. They’re never told what you ordered. They don’t even know how many people they’re cooking for.

Your typical software architecture operates like a regular restaurant where your order comes in via an API and your “eChef”[tm] cooks and assembles your data to be delivered to you.

This talk aims to answer the eternal question that has plagued software development since the dawn of time:

“What would a software architecture look like if we structured our software to operate like the Waffle House?”

We will examine the patterns and techniques that the Waffle House organization uses to build systems that are so resilient that FEMA has the unofficial metric of the “Waffle House Index” to rate the severity of National Disasters.

From a Waffle House Restaurant to the Waffle House Nation it’s designed for speed, efficiency, and reliability.

We will observe and then apply those principles to software development and see where that takes us.

(Hopefully to the Waffle House for a ’training field-trip’)