Ophelia Zhang Dalsgaard og Henrik Høegh

Coupling IT together - A talk about coupling in systems, IT, distributed monoliths and much more

In the early days of IT, coupling was not only unavoidable—it was advantageous. Tight connections between components meant we could push the limits of computational power beyond a few constrained dimensions, weaving together as many elements as we could manage. This “all-in-one” approach made sense for the technology and challenges of the time.

Eventually, we began to refine our craft. The “scalable” monolith emerged, replacing ad-hoc entanglement with carefully constructed layers guided by the SOLID principles. This layered architecture was celebrated as state-of-the-art, a testament to software engineering maturity.
Then came the rallying cry for limitless scaling. Monoliths were suddenly cast as outdated relics—“legacy” systems to be dismantled. In many cases, however, what followed was not true modernization, but a shift from one large pile of mud to many smaller piles. The promise of scaling remained unfulfilled.

This talk will trace the evolution of coupling in software design, examining its historical role, its misunderstood present, and the subtle “grey areas” where coupling is neither inherently good nor bad. Drawing on real-world experience, we will explore what conditions must align for true decoupling to occur—and why chasing trends without fundamentals often leads us back to the same problems in new packaging.
No vendor pitches. No name-dropping. Just hard-earned lessons from the trenches.

Bio:
Ophelia Zhang Dalsgaard
Starting her career as a mix of OpenShift and Database admin, to DevOps styled developer, to being the only QA in an entire bank. Now as Modernisation and Engineering Lead – basically the tribe janitor.
Ophelia has had a lot of opinions, and now she is trimming down which ones she wants to get out with.
Ophelia Zhang Dalsgaard | LinkedIn

Henrik Høegh
Platform engineer working with Cloud Native technologies since 2015 and among the first to obtain a CKA from CNCF in Denmark, and driving Cloud Native transformations at some of the biggest organizations in Denmark. 
Henrik is also a speaker at various conferences across Europe like Kubecon, Atlassian Summit, Container Days, DevOps Days, CoDe-Conf Copenhagen, OOP Germany among others with a focus on scaling and organizational transformations. Henrik is currently a Co-Organizer in the Cloud Native Aarhus meetup group driving community knowledge sharing.
Henrik Høegh | LinkedIn