Chapter 10 — RML as Product Strategy: Designing Trust

The Worlds of Distributed Systems — Chapter 10 “Will this feature work reliably?” “Yes— but it depends on which world we’re willing to own. ” So far in this series: Chapters 1–4 drew the map of the three worlds, Chapters 5–7 drilled into RML-2 (Dialog World) patterns (failures, sagas, APIs), Chapters 8–9 focused on RML-3 (History World) autonomy and case files. In Chapter 10, we zoom out and place RML at the level that decides everything downstream: RML = a “trust world map” for distributed systems. Not just an engineering model—but a product strategy tool. 1) Use RML as a world map (not a “maturity level”) RML is often read as “how mature your rollback is.” But strategically, it’s more useful as: A map of how far your product takes responsibility. A compact restatement: RML-1 — Closed World Inside one room: tests, dry runs, simulations. “A world where you can try freely because you can restart safely.” RML-2 — Dialog World Cross-service recovery: retries, compensation, reconciliation.