In our last issue, we shared a preview of The IcePanel Loop. The future of software and architecture is unclear, but we believe that architectural thinking will be more important than ever. It’s now published on our website here. We’re excited to put this out there in the world and hear your thoughts.

Luca sat down with Chris Richardson (creator of microservices.io) to talk about the state of microservices, service boundaries, “agents for everything” trap, and much more.

Our co-founder and CEO, Jacob, also wrote an update on our journey building IcePanel in his typical, raw and honest style. We’re still a small team of 9, but focused on building the best tool for architects.

To wrap up, we’ll be on the road in September at GOTO in Copenhagen and Explore DDD in Denver. We hope to see you there.

We believe architecture is a loop, not a phase. Most teams treat architecture as something you do once at the start of a project and never revisit. But systems change. Businesses change. People change. Architecture needs to keep up.

We think of the IcePanel loop as 4 continuous steps: Define, Visualise, Validate, and Adapt.

Start by identifying what you want to build and why. Before implementing a solution or designing any architecture, understand the surrounding business context, technical constraints, and clarify the problem you're solving. The goal is to answer the question: "What does this system need to do, and for whom?"

Modelling intent is a strong starting point. It makes the "why" crystal clear to everyone, so every decision that follows can be traced back to it.

Take the intent you've modelled and represent it in a way that others can see and question. Visualising the system answers two key questions: how does it work today, how did it work before?

This isn't about generating pretty diagrams. It's about surfacing the current state of the system and presenting the required context for teams to make decisions about the future. Use a tool that's flexible enough to speak to every audience.

Share the model with stakeholders. Engineers, product managers, leadership, and agents, should all be looking at the same system. Validating the model is about answering: how should it work, how does it work, and how could it work? The goal is to build alignment, create shared understanding, ideate, and make deliberate decisions.

Adaptation is about figuring out how the new model will work. Requirements always change, so we'll need to update the model to reflect reality, record what was decided and why, then loop back to intent. You don't want to be drowning in manual work, so aim to find solutions that don't get in the way and are there when you need them.

Every iteration of these four steps improves the overall architecture. This loop closes the gap between intent and reality. If we're not collectively incorporating architectural decisions, we're just wishful thinkers.

In this episode of Dear Architects, Luca sits down with Chris Richardson, author of Microservices Patterns and the creator of microservices.io, for a wide-ranging, no-hype conversation about where microservices actually stand in 2026, and what Gen AI does (and doesn't) change about how we design systems.

Written by Jacob, co-founder and CEO of IcePanel

I was reminded that this time last year I wrote a post about hitting USD $2 mil ARR. It seemed to be well received, and it’s nice to look up, step back, and see where you’ve come.

I posted on socials about hitting $3 mil earlier this year. In that post, I discussed how things continue to be hard, mostly due to market expectations. We continue to grow steadily as a company, and though not as headline worthy as startups often crave to be, we’re still having fun and get to focus on why we started and what matters to us - a kick ass product we’re proud of.

I thought I would write more about what things we’ve learned since last year’s post, as well as core events that happened.

Some upcoming events to check out for architects, team leads, and engineers. We’ll be at both of these events, so look out for us!

Stay chill,