Jo Minney - Full stack architecture - Laracon AU 2025

Jo Minney explores how Laravel developers can make pragmatic architectural decisions without falling into over engineered patterns designed for big tech teams. She breaks down what architecture really means across UX, data, infrastructure and code structure, and shares practical techniques for working effectively across the full stack. 📚 ## Chapters 01:01 Reflecting on career progression pressure and why levelling up is harder than it looks in software 02:00 Jo’s agency background, the many hats she wears and misconceptions people have about full stack roles 03:10 Contradictory architectural advice, confusion and decision paralysis in real world teams 04:30 How different disciplines define architecture differently 05:33 A spectrum of architectural fields 06:45 Planning models and migrations before ever touching the UI 08:10 How users access information, distinct from how developers store it 09:20 Why bottom up, layer by layer thinking causes disconnects between backend planning and frontend execution 10:45 Why separating system design and UX leads to brittle products 12:00 Architecture as holistic thinking across the entire product, not isolated technical decisions 13:15 Small teams, limited time, and the need to prioritise what moves projects forward 14:20 How user research, content strategy and UI decisions intertwine with backend decisions earlier than teams expect 15:40 Why small teams should adopt vertical slice development instead of horizontal layers 17:05 Milestones as flexible, project based checkpoints rather than rigid sprints 18:40 Making architectural discussions easy, async friendly and tied to outcomes 19:58 Embrace full stack collaboration https://x.com/jo_minney https://bsky.app/profile/jominney.bsky.social https://laracon.au